


Endling

by Deejaymil



Series: Resonations of What's Left of Us [1]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Dark Fantasy, Demons, Explicit Sexual Content, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Kidnapping, Magic, Magical Realism, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Romance, Slavery, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-05-17 20:39:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 116,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5884438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <strong> Noun </strong>
  <br/>
  <strong> endling (plural endlings) </strong>
  <br/>
  <strong> (rare) The last individual of its species or subspecies, which therefore becomes extinct upon its death. </strong>
</p>
<p>Emily Prentiss is a third circle runic mage and with that comes expectations. Expectations that she'll live up to her potential. Expectations that she follow the rules. Expectations that she uses her magic in the way it was intended. None of those expectations included falling in love with a demon.</p>
<p>And none of those expectations included losing him.</p>
<p>She'll do anything, <em> anything at all, </em> to get him back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Light

**Author's Note:**

> A massively huge thanks to my amazing beta, Greeneyedconstellations over on ffnet, because without her I would have torn my hair out by now and this fic would have been completely deleted in a panic.
> 
>  
> 
> _“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”_
> 
>   
>  ―  **Terry Pratchett** ,  _**Reaper Man** _

Emily Prentiss was expecting great things from her new job. Everything she’d read about it made it out to be the exact thing she’d been working for her entire life. Every fight with her mom over the choices she’d made, every misstep, every drop of sweat, blood and tears she’d shed: it had all led her to this morning, waking up and dressing ready for her first day at the BAU, and she was readier than she’d ever been.

At least, that was what she was telling herself.

“Alright, Emily,” she said into the mirror, scowling fiercely at the pale face staring back at her. “Good impressions. Good impressions, good impressions, good impressions.”

Something smacked her leg, needle-like claws skating across her pants and catching the loose fabric. She broke the fixed gaze of her reflection and looked down into the grey-green eyes of her cat, his mouth a wide pink opening on his coal black face.

_“Saying things three times doesn’t make them happen, Emily,”_ Sergio said, twining around her legs with his tail twitching. _“I’m hungry. You bought cans again. Feed me.”_

She nudged him away with her foot. “You’re magical, you idiot. Open them yourself. I’m busy.” Back into the mirror she looked, closing her eyes. _Good impressions, good impressions, good impressions._

Sergio yowled loudly and irritatingly, breaking her concentration. _“Other witches don’t treat their familiars like this. Other witches have respect. They don’t starve us.”_

“Maybe you should go bother those other witches then,” she snapped, not bothering to open her eyes. If she did and he saw her looking, he’d know that he’d won. And then he’d be smug. There was nothing more annoying than a cat with reason to be smug. “And don’t call me a witch. I’m a mage. Qualified, now.”

The sound of his paws padding away into the kitchen and the following _thwop_ of a can being magically rent apart with extreme kitty prejudice wasn’t quite enough to cover his parting remark: _“You can paint a duck white, but that doesn’t make it a swan. You still quack like a duck, little witch. Your new feathers don’t change that.”_

Her familiar was an asshole. He’d see. This job was going to be different.

 

* * *

 

Aaron Hotchner hadn’t been excited to see her. Actually, he’d been the very opposite of excited, which was why she was now standing outside his office feeling awkward and out of place as, inside, he argued with another man in a low, composed voice. She almost wished she couldn’t hear it. Well, she couldn’t. Her asshole of a familiar could, and he was happily reciting it to her. She couldn’t even kick him to get her to stop. He was incorporeal, the faintest idea of a cat by her heels. She hated it when he took this form. It was itchy. She’d had a friend once who’d get itchy and blotchy and sore whenever she breathed in cat dander. Having Sergio as a whisper in her mind felt exactly like how her friend had looked during those attacks, except it was in her brain and her bones and she could hardly scratch those away.

_“Oooooh, he called you a witch, witch,”_ Sergio said, his inner voice making her brain quake. He wasn’t bothering to lower it. A quick glance around the squad room showed a bunch of humans, some therians, and one tall neurotic looking guy who _could_ maybe be some sort of elf. Or possibly just a really twitchy human. No one who’d hear her stupid cat, unless he wanted them to. Her bones crawled. Her legs ached. She wanted to lean back against the wall, but she could feel the protection spells laced deeply into the foundation and it made the skin on her arms fizz as though she’d stuck them into lemonade. Until the building accepted her, she’d probably be better off keeping her distance. Not to mention, she was pretty sure that she was about to lose this job before she’d even gotten a chance to prove that she was perfect for it.

And her fucking cat still wouldn’t shut up.

_“He’s saying you’re here because Elizabeth pulled strings. Now he’s saying it’s too soon after Elle. I wonder who Elle is? Oh, here, he’s saying they don’t need a witch. He’s got you pegged. Reckon he’s even looked at your file?”_ Sergio went silent for a bit and she could almost feel his tail lashing. He was angry, growing angrier. _“Tsh, fancy a human being so quick to dismiss a mage. We could run rings around his little team, no doubt.”_

He’d called her a mage. He really was ticked off.

“It’s not nice being underestimated, is it, Sergio?” she said under her breath. Her eyes followed the skinny maybe-elf as he did some sort of weird half-circle around his desk, shaking long, brown hair out of his eyes. She’d worked Interpol. She knew the regulations for hair length in government jobs, no matter the country, and his was seven shades on the side of no fucking way is that allowed.

Her cat didn’t answer, but his rumbling discontent proved to be almost as annoying as the shadow itchiness he was causing. If he ever made true on his threats to find a more caring witch than her, she was getting a crow next. Or some sort of corvid. No more cats. Something smart and pretty to look at without claws and fish breath and sass.

Maybe-Elf stopped and turned, looking directly into her eyes. She met them without thinking; hazel eyes that looked at her then into her and then, without further provocation, _through_ her. She almost reeled back from that gaze, and the sudden whipcord spark of her magic answering that gaze was only matched by the queerest jolt in her stomach as it attempted to plunge down to her knees.

Holy shit, he was no elf.

“Emily Prentiss?” A cool voice cut through the shocked daze and she turned, the hazel eyes of the skinny man replaced with the cold brown contemplation of the BAU’s Unit Chief and, hopefully, her new boss. Behind him, another man smirked. Shorter, thicker around the middle, but his expression was coolly calculating and somehow much more predatory than that of the Unit Chief’s. He nodded at her, sidled past. Sergio ruffled slightly before settling.

Agent Hotchner held his office door open, his regard trailing from her down to the lower floor of the squad room, before snapping back. “If you intend upon making a future here in this unit, I believe we have things to discuss. I must ask that you either leave your familiar outside of my office or that he present himself. I have delicate spells in place that will object rather strenuously to him attempting to conceal himself.”

Ah. Perhaps he wasn’t the only one underestimating people today.

She squared her shoulders and nodded briskly, stepping easily into the shoes of Elizabeth Prentiss’s well-presented and confident daughter, rather than the slightly ill-worn and awkward shoes of Emily Prentiss. Her mother’s daughter could do this. She could nail this interview. Sergio appeared around her neck as a sudden warm weight and dug his claws into her shoulder possessively. He appeared determined to begin a staring contest with the stern looking Unit Chief, one that Emily wasn’t entirely sure he could win.

As she walked into the office she chanced a glance back over her shoulder. The man from before was gone, the space next to his desk empty.

But her skin still prickled as though his eyes still lingered.

 

* * *

 

Hotchner had handed her off to a perky blonde woman who was, this time, definitely an elf.

“Jennifer Jareau,” she introduced herself, holding out a perfectly manicured hand and beaming at Emily as though her one delight of the day was meeting her. Emily didn’t want to like her, but she did, almost immediately. “My friends call me JJ. You’re Emily Prentiss?”

“Hi,” Emily said, taking the offered hand and almost jumping out of her skin at the icy cold touch of it. An alpine elf. Interesting. “That’s me. Runic mage, third circle.”

JJ’s smile flickered and then she laughed, the practised laugh of the bureaucratic. Emily had learned that laugh before she was forming full sentences. “You’re young to be a qualified mage. I’m sorry, I assumed you were a witch. I should know better by now than to judge.”

Emily paused at that final cryptic remark. “Is that a common problem around here?”

This time, JJ’s laugh was real, no trace of the polished sound she’d made before. “Oh man, wait until I introduce you to Reid. He was casting first circle by the time he was thirteen.”

Emily’s brain tried to process that statement, stumbled, and promptly gave up and left her floundering.

_“What,”_ Sergio said flatly, his whiskers stiffening. _“She’s kidding, right?”_

“You’re kidding, right?” Emily repeated, hoping she wasn’t gaping like a fish.

JJ shook her head, her eyes still laughing. “Don’t worry, you’ll love him. He’s a kitten.”

_“She’s awful to cats,”_ Sergio stated glumly to JJ as the two women began to walk towards the conference room where the team was beginning to gather. JJ glanced down at him as though she’d heard him, unconsciously picking up on the cat’s words. He tried to look small and starved, the most neglected creature in the world. _“Don’t let her near him, she’ll buy him canned food and then make him open it himself.”_

She was so done with cat familiars.

 

* * *

 

The team—her team, as she had to keep reminding herself, all seemed oddly welcoming right off the bat. JJ had practically woven her a friendship bracelet within minutes of meeting her and, although Hotchner was as standoffish as they come, Derek Morgan was a pleasant surprise. He stood when she entered the room and introduced himself to her and then, without missing a beat, introduced himself to Sergio as well. The cat nodded his head in recognition, keeping his cool, but Emily could feel his delight. He was an attention whore.

He was _her_ attention whore though and, as handy as the hidden runes on her arms and hands were at a whole range of things, they were no match for his nose at sniffing out people's natures.

_“Human,”_ he’d said promptly upon spotting Hotchner earlier that day. _“Delightful,”_ was all he’d say about JJ, and Emily rolled her eyes at him. She’d pegged that one on her own, anyway. Morgan received a purr and a curt, _“Shifter. Smells mostly canine, but we all have our flaws.”_ Gideon, as the smirking man from before was called, had introduced himself in an absent sort of way as though his mind was elsewhere and then looked down at the cat with none of that vacancy in his gaze. Sergio had fallen silent and said nothing about him, even when prompted. That was one mystery she was being left to sort out on her own.

The high expectations she’d held for this job seemed to be holding so far. Hotchner had relented in his stiffness towards her, although there was still marked suspicion in his bearing. She couldn’t tell if it was aimed at her or if some previous events had left him wary. Either that or he didn’t trust her because she was a woman. Or a mage, but she doubted he’d have gotten as far in his career as he had without being able to work with mages, especially in the BAU. Everyone who even glanced in the direction of the sixth floor knew about _The_ David Rossi. Even Sergio had read the man’s books. Emily hadn’t. Although. if there was anything about Gideon or Hotchner in there, she probably should.

But, if Emily had learned anything in her life, it was that when things seemed to be going smoothly, there was always something rough hurtling her way. This day was no exception.

There was a rustle of fabric and a hurried, uneven gait and a man appeared in the doorway; all wild hair bordering on chaotic and long, ungraceful limbs. “Sorry I’m late,” said the man in a throaty voice, breathing heavily. “I was in Archives and I got distracted and then the coffee machine broke down and I had to go down to fifth, and you know every time I go to fifth I have to take the long way or Rivers asks me to help her with her computers and I don’t know anything about computers and they just seem to break more when I go near them…”

“Spence,” JJ said, grinning.

Emily turned, half a smile already forming at the babbling monologue from the new arrival, and found herself face to face with the maybe-not-an-elf from before. Still definitely not an elf. Sergio turned as well, and for the first time, got a good look at the man.

And promptly puffed up to twice his size, let out a loud, throbbing yowl that made Emily’s teeth ache, and vanished with a _pop_.

“Oh,” said Spencer Reid, shaking that wild hair out of his eyes and looking sheepish and impossibly innocent. Also, gorgeous. Perilously pretty, in fact and Emily hadn’t spent her formative years studying magic without knowing that pretty was almost always synonymous with predatory. JJ was pretty, but it went without saying that elves were dangerous. Doyle was pretty, and look how that ended.

Emily didn’t do pretty.

The rune on Emily’s arm burned, the old one that coiled around her left upper bicep, the one she’d gotten because of and in case of Doyle: **δαιμονιζομένους**

Demon.


	2. Trust

Before, Gideon had been disinterested in her. She kind of missed that now. He watched her with eagle-eyed scrutiny as she tried not to squirm in her chair. Hotchner paced behind her. She had the weirdest déjà vu sensation, as though she was eight again and had just been caught setting explosive runes in the boys’ bathroom.

“A big part of what we do here relies on our ability to completely trust one another,” Gideon said, his face relaxed and almost smiling. She didn’t trust that expression for a second. “We need to know that you’re not bringing any prior grievances on board that will affect your teamwork, especially with Dr. Reid.”

She smiled in what she hoped was a much more reassuring manner than the hidden smile on Gideon’s lips. Now, that was a man with layers. Creepy, smirking, secretive layers. “I have no problems with demons,” her mouth said firmly, while her brain screamed _Doyle, Doyle, Doyle_ on a scratched loop like a broken record. “Sergio was just startled. I can speak with him.”

Hotch coughed politely, drawing their attention. “Yeah, he’s not the first to react like that. We call it the Reid Effect. It happens with kids too.”

Gideon chuckled bizarrely. She blinked. In a single second, the atmosphere had switched from interrogation to conversation. She almost had whiplash. “He’s also impossible to get through airport security.”

She was never going to understand these people.

 

* * *

 

They gave her the desk across from Reid, and the look in Hotchner’s eyes as he’d showed it to her suggested that she’d better get to work rebuilding the bridges she’d broken. So, she made two mugs of coffee on the now working percolator and sat down to wait. She couldn’t start on anything until the medical magi cleared her for duty, and the inactivity was making her restless.

“They heavily discourage biting your nails during the course of the circle apprenticeships,” said that low voice from behind her. She tried to ignore the way it made her palms sweat against the warm ceramic mug in her hands, despite the cold chill the spark of fear brought. “I’m surprised they didn’t train it out of you then.”

_Doyle, Doyle, Doyle._

She turned and smiled at him, her arm burning anew. She was really going to have to recalibrate that rune tonight when she got home to her kit. “Yeah, they’re not as strict about it in the rune classes. It’s mostly potion mages that need to be careful about that.”

He shrugged and sidled to his own desk, eyeing the mug there. “Oh. Is this mine?” As he passed, she caught a waft of his scent, bitter and rich all at once. Her gut cramped at the memory of it.  She doubted anyone else in that room would even notice his scent or, if they had, they’d simply assume it was deodorant. But she knew it. Intimately. _Doyle._

She really needed to get her shit together. “Yeah. JJ said you like sugar, so I put lots in there.”

The way his face brightened at the mention of sugar would almost have been adorable if she wasn’t busy trying to stamp down memories of _that_ touch and _that_ scent and _that_ man. “Oh, I do! I love lots of sugar.” He tasted the coffee and twitched, making a face like Sergio when she brought the wrong cat food: “…. err, perhaps I like more than lots of sugar.”

She’d put five spoonfuls in. She shot him a reproachful look. “What do you do? Put it in with a shovel?”

“I don’t use a spoon,” he said with another crooked smile, and her palms were sweaty again except this time it was heat and fire that did it instead of icy fear. The memory of Doyle faded slightly and let her look at him properly; faded sweater vest, leather messenger bag and all.

He was cute.

And, really, nothing at all like Doyle.

 

* * *

 

“So, is it standard procedure to have our medicals together?” Emily teased as she and JJ waited in the waiting room of the medical bay. JJ just flicked a lock of hair behind her ear and looked bored, reading the magazine sitting on the stand next to her out of the corner of her eye. Upside down. Was everyone here weird, or had she just been mistaken in thinking she was normal all these years?

“Nah, we were almost due anyway so they booked us in together. All us girls. Garcia should be here soon too.” Inexplicably, JJ looked expectantly at a blinking modem sitting on the desk near the door as she said this. “The guys are in for later this afternoon, except Reid.”

Emily stared at the modem too, because JJ seemed to be waiting for something and she’d be damned if she missed it. “Why not Reid? If you’re all up for your annuals, that is.”

Her arm burned suddenly, and she almost jumped out of her seat with shock.

“Because I’m secretly a girl,” said a familiar, glum voice from the vacant seat next to her. She turned, and Reid was slumped in it with his long legs sprawled out ridiculously into the room and butt almost hanging off the front. He was the very epitome of a monumental sulk-fest.

“A very pretty girl,” JJ said reassuringly, without even sparing him a glance. “Sit up straight, Spence.”

“You’re like a fucking cat,” Emily told him, rattled by his sudden appearance. “What, did you teleport here? I didn’t see you walk in.”

Reid blinked owlishly and slowly sat up, tucking his legs back so his knees hung out at awkward angles. He still slumped, just the other way now, bending forward like a noodle that had been cooked for a couple of seconds and then forced to sit in a hard-backed waiting room chair.  “True teleportation is actually limited to a few select species and, besides, the anti-teleportation protections throughout the building mean that if I was, somehow, capable of teleportation and I attempted it for some reason, I would be—”

“Spence.” JJ’s voice was a warning.

“—vaporised,” Reid finished. Then he smiled. JJ nodded and went back to her magazine, tilting her head so that she was reading it at a ninety-degree angle instead of upside down. Reid’s smile turned somewhat desperate as Emily didn’t respond. It almost hurt to see. At some point, Emily suspected that someone had taught Reid that he should smile if he messed up some sort of basic social interaction, and the kid had obviously never quite unlearned that.

“BAU?” someone called, sticking their head out of the medical bay.

Emily stood. “Can you tell me more about the rune system here?” she asked Reid as they walked to the door, him close enough to her heels that she could feel the air displaced from his footfalls. She wasn’t faking the interest in her voice. “I need to learn my way around them, and you seem to know plenty.”

“I’d love to,” he said, sounding genuinely delighted to be asked. “Hey, where’s Garcia?”

She realized suddenly that he’d never actually told her how he got there without her noticing him.

 

* * *

 

Reid had vanished as soon as they got in, following a sallow faced man into an adjourning room. The door sealed magically as soon as it closed, making Emily’s ears pop with the change in pressure, an astoundingly powerful sealing spell. She glanced at JJ, who looked unconcerned.

“Prentiss, Emily?” called one of the magi, tapping the corner of a bed with his clipboard. “Says you’re new? You need creds then?”

Emily flinched when she saw the kit they’d brought out to draw the sigil on her palm that would symbolise her employment with the FBI. It was positively barbaric. “Ah. I’m a fairly accomplished rune mage. If you give me the spell-ink, I can—”

JJ quavered with silent laughter next to her as the man shook his head, his face unchanging. “No can do, Agent Prentiss. Licensed runic mage only. Besides, we gotta lace it with a GPS and tie it to your Unit Chief, and your clearance isn’t even in the same ballpark as what’s needed to access those spells.”

JJ nudged her with her shoulder. “They call him The Butcher,” she teased with a wink. “Reid’s productivity dropped by like seventy percent for a week after he got his creds—he couldn’t hold a pen and his coffee at the same time with only one hand. And the coffee won.” Emily stared at her. She was kidding, right? This was a government position. Surely, they had the best?

“Agent Jareau? Basic medical and mental checks?” the man asked, ignoring Emily now that he’d shown her where to sit. “Righto, this bed here, and please alert us if, at any point, you feel your defensive spells being triggered so we can respond adequately.”

The door banged open, and a blonde woman with wild, garish clothes and half a trinket shop on her arms bustled in. “Am I late?” she babbled, doing a half spin on the spot and practically running—or as much running as one could do in bright purple heels—towards the third bed. “Hello, you must be Emily! I’m Penelope, Penelope Garcia, and I am so sorry I’m late. I took a wrong turn at the modem on sixth and ended up down near the basement, somehow, my god the wiring here is older than Gideon. Oh god, don’t tell him I said that. Oh god, he probably already knows—”

“Technical Analyst Garcia?” the man said incredulously, looking down at his clipboard like it had betrayed him. Another man was entering the room, snapping latex gloves onto his hands and humming the Star-Spangled Banner under his breath.

“Yes, that’s me,” the woman said all in one rambling gasp, taking a deep breath to calm down. She blinked when she saw the humming man. “Oh, is someone getting credded? Poor them.”

 

* * *

 

Her hand was on fire, her brain felt like mush, and she was so fucking unimpressed with the level of mages that the fucking government hired. The hell kind of treatment was that? She hadn’t made someone bleed while casting since she still had her food delivered to her mouth via aeroplane.

She sulked on the bed alone, waiting for the magi to return to do her mental check. All that was left now was making sure she couldn’t be compromised by their unsubs, then she could slink back to her desk and put something cold on her hand. She looked down and almost clenched her fist in anger at the sight of the hastily wadded up bandage on her hand, spotted with blood and spell-ink.

So. Goddamn. _Sloppy_.

They’d asked her to deactivate all her own defences for this procedure, and she felt vulnerable and naked sitting there with her magic locked away tightly. Even with the stinging bite of the aptly nicknamed Butcher’s runes fading on her palm. She lifted the corner of the bandage nervously, not quite sure what to expect.

And there was a tug at the back of her mind, the awareness of trying to recall a memory that had slipped away. She paused, curious, then reached back for it.

_Oh_. Not it.

Him.

_“I wouldn’t look yet,”_ Reid’s voice hummed, rattling around in her skull. It was strange, hearing his voice instead of Sergio’s. _“You won’t be able to see much but ink and blood and it won’t work properly until the spell sets. A few hours, maybe.”_  His voice was much nicer than her cat’s. It didn’t itch at all. Actually, it was… sweet. Hard to grasp, the feeling fading on her brain almost instantly. If Sergio’s voice was hay-fever and cat dander, Reid’s was the sensation of cotton candy dissolving on a tongue. It didn’t make much sense, but magic rarely did.

It was also hot as hell.

She bit her lip and clenched her thighs together, making sure her emotions were firmly squared away from him before reaching back and replying with _just_ her voice: _“How the hell did you get in my head?”_ It wasn’t as nice talking back to him as it was having him just talk to her. Their magic clashed when it met and slipped off each other. It made it hard to focus and gave the impression that if she shoved at him, even a little, she could push him out.

_“I wasn’t trying to. You’re very… loud.”_

She thought about telling him to piss off. Then, she reconsidered. It was boring here, and he took her mind off her hand. _“Where are you? Why are you in a separate room? It’s not like we had to take our clothes off.”_

_“I’m one of only three employees here aligned with the dark. They have to ship in a dark aligned magus from DC headquarters to do our annuals—and this is the only room where light affined magic doesn’t leech in and interfere.”_

_“… Interesting.”_ Beyond interesting. There was no way Reid should even be able to sense her, let alone slip into her mind like really dorky smoke. It explained the weird clashing their magic was doing—her light affinity and his dark were oil and water to each other.

_“I shouldn’t even be able to sense you,”_ Reid continued, and now he sounded intrigued as well as the full impact of their conversation seemed to sink in. She could actually feel the repressed excitement he was barely containing at this unexpected discovery, clearly not as practised at compartmentalizing his feelings as she was. She should probably teach him that, if this was going to become a habit.

Was it going to become a habit?

She glanced at the clock, probably going to be here a while. She envied Garcia and JJ and how quickly they’d been released—and why was Reid still here? _“Can you tell me more about the rune-work here? It’s boring as heck waiting.”_

There was no real way to describe feeling someone laugh, but she smiled when his chuckle echoed back at her. It was kind of infectious. _“Okay. This guy won’t notice I’m not listening to him anymore anyway. He’s awful at this. I do most of my shielding myself. So, in the sixties…”_

* * *

 

Reid beat her to work the next day, busily scribbling at a report when she walked in. She put a cup of coffee on the desk in front of him, watching as his nose twitched as he snapped back into the world of the living at the scent of it.

“Yum, thanks,” he said, his eyes slipping back down the complicated series of calculations he appeared to be writing in the margins. She hoped he wasn’t going to hand that into Hotchner. She was pretty sure there was a doodle of a monkey under his thumb. She was also pretty sure that he hadn’t even processed she was there, not really. Trapped in his own head.

She put her left palm between the paper and his nose. “Check it,” she said, and activated the sigil. It blazed, delicate lines gleaming silver and showing the FBI symbol in full glory. It was actually really finely done, even if he’d been rough putting it there. She probably could have made it neater but nowhere near as intricate.

His hand lifted off the desk and paused, hovering just above her palm and blinking, coming back to himself and pulling back slightly. “May I?” he asked politely. She nodded. His touch was feather-light, tracing the lines of the symbol with the pad of his thumb as though checking for lumps or ridges that would give away the rune when she deactivated it. There were none, she’d already checked. Just some mild pinkness to the skin that would fade quickly. She refused to focus on the way her pulse sped up at his touch as well. That was just the natural response to an attractive, young—except she had no idea how old he was, really—man showing a marked interest in a part of her body.

“Is it weird having a rune you didn’t cast on you?” Reid asked curiously. He didn’t take his finger away. He did the opposite. She let her hand drop to the desk, deactivating the sigil, and he let his hand rest on top. It was warm and dry and, yeah, she didn’t actually want him to take it away, except it would be really strange if Hotchner glanced out the office and saw them holding hands. And he was still running his thumb in circles on her skin, and _goddamn_ she really needed to get laid before dealing with him anymore.

“Not really,” she replied, with none of the strain of her hyper-focus on the touch of his skin showing in her voice, “I have others. And this one has benefits.”

“Gets you out of parking tickets easily enough,” said a cheerful voice behind them. Reid’s hand snapped away to fall into his lap and out of sight. “Morning, Prentiss. Morning, Pretty-Boy. Hey Prentiss, did you enjoy your date with our rune mage?”

The rant she launched into about unprofessionalism in her craft as Morgan pulled a face like he regretted asking was just long and blistering enough that she could look again at Reid after without her neck burning.

Barely.

 

* * *

 

She looked him up once after fighting the urge for days. Sergio was still refusing to come back to work with her and, when she’d pushed him, he’d shoved a very vivid scent-memory of Doyle’s sweat at her and vanished. She wasn’t the only one with a fixed memory, apparently.

She wanted to prove that Reid was different; to Sergio and to herself. She also kind of wanted to know just what exactly Reid _was_. And it wasn’t hard to find his file in the database and pull it up. It did leave her feeling guilty though, and she scanned it quickly with her index finger resting on the escape key. Her arm prickled uncomfortably, but she was used to that by now. It did it practically from the moment she got to work until the moment she left it. She _really_ needed to recalibrate it.

 

 

 

Holy shit, he _was_ young. You never really knew with demons, especially the pretty ones.

 

 

 

She paused at that. Oh. Poor Reid.

 

 

… Poor Reid.

 

 

 

“What are you doing?”

Emily mashed the escape key and spun around guiltily, finding herself face to face with trinket-shop woman—Garcia—from the medical bay. She’d been meaning to introduce herself properly, but Garcia had been busy doing… something computer-y… and it had slipped Emily’s mind.

“Um,” Emily said. There was really no point lying: “Reading Reid’s personnel file.”

The woman frowned. The look didn’t suit her face. “I know that. I know all. I basically am the intranet here, you know. But why? I mean… out of everyone’s, his is redacted to high hell and back. I don’t even have clearance to read it.” She blinked and suddenly grinned. “Actually, don’t answer that. Our Junior de-man is a mystery wrapped inside an enigma wrapped inside a sweater-vest—it was the first thing I did when he started here as well. Hi, we haven’t met properly yet! Also, by the way, Reid’s been watching you read his file for like ten minutes now.”

Emily turned her chair with a numb sense of resignation and found Reid perched on the side of her desk; he resembled some kind of gangly, overgrown bird holding a coffee cup and, inexplicably, a troll doll with a vivid blue Mohawk. “Hi,” he said with a crooked smile, and she dropped her head to the desk and groaned.

“Wear a bell, damnit,” she mumbled into the wood, and he laughed. “What _are_ you?”

He touched her hand and she glanced up into his face. She’d almost nailed the knack of ignoring her bizarre attraction to the man. “I’m me,” he said, very quietly, and there was something like an apology in the tone.

She slipped out of the barriers the magi had firmly erected in her mind. She shouldn’t, not really, her slipping out meant that anyone could slip _in_. But she didn’t want to say this bit out loud: _“I’m sorry for snooping.”_

A wry chuckle in her head sounded almost immediately after, slightly muted and without any of the melty sweetness to it. He must have his own shields down to be able to hear her.

Risky.

_“Don’t be. I understand.”_

* * *

 

Two weeks after she’d begun at the BAU, there was a knock at her door. Her arm burned. She opened it to find Reid standing there, looking sheepish, slamming the door in his face out of reflex.

She liked him, liked him plenty. Probably _too_ much, really. But that was at work. She couldn’t have a demon in her home. Not after Doyle.

_“Go away,”_ yowled Sergio furiously, his tail lashing. _“Make him go away, or I will!”_

Goddamnit. She opened the door again, and he was still standing there, his face stunned. “You shut the door on me,” he said, his voice the most fucking _woeful_ thing she’d heard all day, and she’d spent her morning listening to Attenborough narrating baby geese jumping off cliffs on TV.

“You’re at my house, Reid,” she snapped, and she couldn’t keep the bite out of her tone.

His face shuttered, and he stepped away. Something rustled in his hand, and she looked down to find a bag hanging from his fingers loosely. The bag was damp with condensation from something warm inside. She could smell it. Chicken tikka masala, her favourite.  There was the outline of DVDs against the plastic.

Well, shit.

“Okay,” he murmured, and vanished. She swore, loudly and inventively, until the neighbour across the hall banged on her door angrily. Then she swore a little more because that neighbour was a bitch and her kid kept throwing gum at Sergio.

She closed the door. Her arm prickled. She opened it again. There was a carton of curry against her door, a DVD underneath, and a hastily scrawled note on the top, already smearing from the heat: _Sorry, Em. I should have called first. Peace offering. Smiley face SR_

“Oh my god, he actually wrote the word smiley face,” she told Sergio incredulously, shoving the carton under the cat’s nose so he could see. “What is _with_ this guy?”

Sergio blinked. Then his fur puffed up. _“Oh my god,”_ he snapped in a mock-falsetto of her voice. _“You’re actually attracted to him. A demon. Again! Do you have a fetish for them or something?”_

“I’m not attracted to him,” she lied, and flipped the DVD over. Solaris. In the original Russian. All 165 minutes of it. She’d told Morgan she’d wanted to see it, ignoring the raised eyebrow he’d given her. She hadn’t even realized Reid was nearby.

That seemed to be an ongoing theme.

_“Liar. If you invite him in, he’ll probably sneak in during the night and have his way with us.”_

“Don’t be ridiculous. Incubi are extinct.” She pulled her phone out and hesitated only a second before pulling up his name and shooting off a rapid-fire text. “And you’re a cat.”

_“Cats have rights of consent as well, you know.”_

He couldn’t have gone far. After all, he couldn’t teleport.

**To Not-Elf** **:** **I’m sorry. Sergio is being a weirdo about you coming in.**

He replied so quickly she had a suspicion he’d been hanging around outside just waiting for her to guilt-trip herself into texting him.

**Not-Elf** **:** **Oh. Do you want to watch the movie? S. R.**

**To Not-Elf** **:** **Yes. I really am sorry. Maybe your place?**

_“Emily.”_ Sergio growled to emphasise his point. _“If this goes wrong, I’m not going to save you this time. I lost six lives saving you from the last demon.”_

“Reid’s different.”

**Not-Elf:** **I don’t have to come in. S. R.**

_“Here lies Emily Prentiss. Beloved by few, because she was awful to them all. I’ll have them engrave, ‘I know he’s a demon but I thought I could change him’ on your headstone_ — _”_

**To Not-Elf:** **… I’m not watching a movie in Russian in the hallway.**

_“_ — _or maybe ‘He kissed like an angel, so I forgot he was a demon.’ That’s pretty poetic. Elizabeth would like it, I think.”_

**Not-Elf:** **Window. S. R.**

She looked up to find him waving at her from the fire escape near her kitchen window. Sergio spluttered, cut off mid-rant by his sudden appearance. She slid the window open and shook her head at him, trying not to laugh. “You just signed a one word text, you realize how redundant that is right?” He just blinked at her, and she sighed. “Are we actually going to do this?”

He slid onto the windowsill, making himself comfy and crossing his legs. Then he grinned and her stomach lurched. “I’ve sat in weirder places,” he said, and she didn’t doubt that at all.

_“I’m having no part in this,”_ Sergio growled, and vanished.

More chicken for them, then.

 

* * *

 

Three hours later, Reid was still on her windowsill, it was getting dark outside, and she was actually having a lot of fun. At some point, she’d noticed he was shivering and had handed him a blanket. Then the movie had ended, so she’d put on another. And made popcorn, which was perched between his legs since he couldn’t reach into the apartment to get it until she asked him in. Which, she wasn’t quite ready to do yet, despite the fun.

She didn’t even mind that she had to move her TV into the kitchen for him to see it clearly, or that the open window was letting the cold air in, or even that she was sitting on the counter with her ass almost in her kitchen sink.

Okay, she minded the cold a little.

“You’re shivering,” Reid pointed out, peering around at her with difficulty.

“Yeah well, I have the damn window open, and you have the warmest blanket,” she said, rolling her eyes at him. “I’m a rune mage, I don’t do weather.”

“You can have the blanket back,” he offered, slipping it off his shoulders.

“Don’t you dare. You’re a guest—if you take that off, I’ll shut the window on you.”

“Is this how you treat all your guests?” He pulled a confused face. “That’s not… polite.” Then he fell silent, and something odd crossed his face, a strange reluctant longing. “We could… I mean. You’ll have to come out here but we can… share.”

Oh. _Oh._

_Yes._

“No,” she said softly. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She hoped he didn’t ask why. She tried to think of something to say but her mind fumbled, rambled uselessly. The one time she needed to think of a good lie, all she could think of was the truth: _because you’re sweet and kind and yeah, really pretty. And I don’t do pretty, and I’ve never done kind, but I want you. If I come out there I’m going to practically be in your lap, and if I’m sitting in your lap and you do the things you do I’m going to want you… Because I don’t trust myself to say no._

“Because you don’t trust me.” He sounded sad. She hated that she’d done that to him. It was necessary because if he thought she’d hurt him, he wouldn’t get too close.

She looked away and leaned back so he couldn’t see her to profile her. “Maybe it’s time the night came to an end. Maybe… maybe we can do this again? Another time? With warmer… blankets.”

_Maybe I’ll invite you in. Maybe you’ll say yes._

_Maybe I will too._

“Alright. It’s a date.”

She leaned out the window to get the blanket and the bowl of popcorn and felt the barest whisper of humid air against her cheek in a soft kiss, even though he was standing an arm’s length away.  “By the way,” he said with a shy smile. “You might not do weather… but I do…”

When he vanished from sight, she fancied she heard the rustle of wings.


	3. Bound

She woke up the next morning to the screen of her phone happily proclaiming, _one text message received!_

**Not-Elf:** **Did you know greetings such as good morning, good evening, etc., are all found in the earliest literature and are considered to be derived from ‘God’ as in ‘May God be with you’? S. R.**

There was a long moment where she blinked blearily at the screen and quietly realized that there was no way she was going to be able to handle texting Reid before her morning coffee if this became a regular thing.

**To Not-Elf:** **Normal people just say, ‘good morning.’**

**Not-Elf:** **Isn’t that what I said? S. R.**

_“Why are you smiling like that?”_ Sergio asked her suspiciously, appearing at the end of her bed and swishing his tail. _“You don’t smile in the morning. You don’t smile until at least ten.”_ She hid her phone under her pillow and swept her legs under the blankets, knocking him onto his side with a startled _mrrow_. She wasn’t guilty about texting Reid. She didn’t have to explain herself to a cat—even a magic cat.

“I’m just happy. Aren’t I allowed to be happy?” she asked him, avoiding his claws with her toes as he retaliated for her surprise attack and smacked at her blanket-covered feet.

_“Not before ten. It’s unnerving. Now feed me. I’m starved.”_

* * *

 

Her first proper case was with Reid and, because god clearly didn’t want to make this any less awkward, Gideon. Alone. She wondered how they were going to fit the entire team on the jet, because with just her, Reid and Gideon in there, the space already felt claustrophobic. She wished Sergio would get over his mistrust of Reid and come back to work. If she could put Doyle behind her, he could too. After all, technically, Doyle hadn’t done a thing to Emily Prentiss and her familiar, Sergio.

“Why do we get a private jet?” she asked Gideon with interest, trying to make small talk. He didn’t even look up from where he sat opposite, paging slowly through a thick file on the man they were going to question. Reid was next to her, flicking through an identical file rather more quickly. He licked his finger between pages, making a soft rhythm that she half focused on even as she waited for Gideon’s response.

“Cost effectiveness,” he grunted. Then he looked up. She repressed a shiver. It was uncanny having all of that sharp interest suddenly focused on her—frightening and intense all at once. “You’re third circle? Why only third? We don’t usually hire mages ranked under second.”

“I’m newly qualified,” she said quietly, sensing that he already knew this. “My previous work didn’t require me to be formally trained.”

“I can tutor her up to second,” Reid interjected suddenly, the lick-flick rhythm faltering as he looked up and met Gideon’s gaze with a smile that was a lot calmer than her own. “In seventy-three percent of fresh graduates from magical academia, it takes less than six months for them to qualify for second circle. A further thirteen percent make it between three and four months.” He beamed at her, and she felt the back of her neck flush, suddenly very conscious of the space between them. “I bet we could do it in two.”

“No,” Gideon said, looking back down at the file. “She needs a registered mage, Reid. I’ll do it. Prentiss, I’m going to organize extra training sessions between cases. I expect you to attend. Now, Jamal Abaza—”

Emily felt the tickling sensation of someone trying to talk to her and reached for it, fighting the urge to sneeze.

_“Sorry,”_ Reid’s voice hummed in her head. Gideon kept talking, completely unaware of their silent communication. Reid kept talking out loud too, not even skipping a beat as he, somehow, managed to keep two separate conversations going: _“he’s a great teacher. You’ll learn quickly. And he doesn’t bite.”_ It made her head hurt to listen to both of him at once. There was the faint sensation of laughing in her mind. _“Doesn’t bite much,”_ Reid added, and his mouth twitched into a smile that was sorely at odds with the case they were discussing.

 

* * *

 

As it turned out, between cases meant that they’d barely stepped off the plane back in Quantico before Gideon had informed her that he’d see her in his office that afternoon.

“Is he serious?” she groaned to Reid as Gideon strode away and left them standing there on the icy tarmac of the runway. “We’ve been on the job for two days. I need a shower. I need my bed. I don’t need three hours of casting with him looming over me and correcting every incantation.”

“He won’t ask more of you than what you’re capable of,” Reid answered quietly. “He’s never pushed me beyond my limits.”

She looked at him with interest. “Gideon trained you?”

Reid nodded, his expression serious. Ten minutes ago, he’d been giddy and manic with excitement that the case was over, buzzing like a soda can that someone had shaken up and left to pop. Now he was dull, flat. The kid swung between moods faster than she did. “Not just magic. Profiling, working in a team… all of the things I needed to know to work in this unit. I wouldn’t be who I am without him. I owe him everything.”

It was a sudden insight into two very private men, and for some reason he’d decided to share. She didn’t know how to respond, so she deflected. “I should be done by eight,” she said instead, touching his arm, fingers tracing the rough fabric of the ugly brown jacket he was wearing. Her arm didn’t react—she’d finally fixed the rune. It had taken some improvising, but it wouldn’t respond to him anymore. Improvising being straight up weaving the essence of his name through the rune. It was a weirdly intimate spell, although necessary, and she was determined to never show him. He leaned slightly, ever so slightly into her touch, even as she continued. “You could bring over one of those old sci-fi shows you bore Morgan to tears about and tell me everything that’s scientifically inaccurate about them.”

His face lit up again, and she could see the temptation written all over it despite the haggard look two days of racing against the clock had left on him. On all of them, except for Gideon. The man seemed to thrive when pressure was applied to him. She wondered how much pressure it would take to crack that calm exterior. She noted suddenly that, under his excitement, Reid looked ill. She frowned, seeing with concern the deep purple shadows under his eyes and the pallid cast to his skin.

The excitement vanished just as quickly as it had appeared, and he looked frustrated and worn again. “Oh. I can’t, I’m sorry. I have stuff I have to do tonight. Sorry, Em.”

She wasn’t disappointed. She _wasn’t_. She should have considered that he’d have his own stuff to do, his own interests and friends outside of work. She shouldn’t have a tiny voice in the back of her mind saying, _what could possibly be more important than this thing we have just starting?_ She pushed that thought back quickly. There was nothing _starting_ here. Not with her co-worker; her co-worker who wasn’t only a demon but also an actual certified genius. How could she possibly relate to him on his level when his level was probably about fifty IQ points above hers?

“Raincheck?” Reid asked, and she realized that she’d been standing there lost in her own thoughts. She inwardly shook herself, noted his plaintive expression, and smiled at him cheerily. _See, I’m fine. Just peachy. Nothing to see here folks, just two friends being friendly._

“Of course, if Gideon doesn’t murder me tonight, anyway.”

 

* * *

 

She found Gideon sitting at his desk, smiling down at what appearing to be a picture of two painted swallows flying wing-tip to wingtip, their wide beaks open in song.

“A fan of birds, sir?” she asked quietly, examining the picture. It seemed so… odd. Here he was, Jason Gideon, fabled profiler, looking at this depiction of two common birds like they held some sort of great mystery he needed to solve.

“I’m of the firm belief that there’s a lot we can learn from birds,” he responded absently. “For example, monogamy is almost solely an avian trait. Few mammals are as meticulously monogamous as many birds. Swallows, for example, will return to their home nests every year, no matter how far from there they travel during migration. They’re also known as the freedom birds… they cannot abide captivity and will mate only in the wild. Fascinating and admirable, don’t you think?”

She wasn’t entirely sure how to answer that, so she waited for him to make the next move. His gaze lifted and scanned the far wall. She followed his eye-line, studying the rows and rows of photos and mementos lining the shelf and wall across from his desk. “Are they your family?”

“Of a sort.” He rapped his fingers on the desk with a restlessness more at home on Reid than him. “Why did you wait so long to pursue upper-magical education? Normally those seeking to become mages enter the circle apprenticeships directly after obtaining a college degree. Yet, you waited to begin your two-year apprenticeship until you were, by my count, thirty-four? And with a career already under your belt, one that being known as a third circle caster would be a black mark against you.”

The abrupt conversational shift left her blank for a second, but she recovered quickly. “My career at the time didn’t require more than a passable working knowledge of my magical abilities. I didn’t feel it was necessary. And I knew that I wouldn’t stay third circle for long.” She tried to ignore the bite of defensiveness in her tone. Her nails dug into her palms behind her back, hands clenching. They’d leave crescent shaped marks she’d rub at later. This was a sore spot, one that her mother liked to pick at.

Gideon was a blank slate. She couldn’t profile him. “Are you often satisfied by being merely ‘passable’ in your abilities, Agent Prentiss?”

_Hoo boy._ Emily suddenly realized that she had unwittingly stumbled into a verbal chess match with Jason Gideon without even realizing he’d made the first move. She wasn’t overly worried. Emily had always been very good at chess. “That would imply that my magical abilities are the entirety of my skillset,” she said, settling her shoulders and staring him down stubbornly. Letting him know from the get-go that Emily Prentiss did not back down from a challenge. “But we both know that’s not true. I’m more than just a runic-mage, with all due respect, sir. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be down in the medical bay; carving agents’ hands up.”

There was a long, tense moment where she wondered if this was the part where he told her to pack her desk and leave, because Hotch might wear the Unit Chief title, but she was under no illusions about who was holding the reins of this particular carriage. And, while the only thing she knew for sure was that Gideon was a proud man, she wasn’t entirely sure yet if he was the kind of proud man who could take being spoken to like that from a subordinate.

Especially a woman.

Then, he smiled, and suddenly it seemed like the easiest thing in the world to profile him. She wasn’t fooled by that. “Good answer. After all, if we were all merely the sum of our magical abilities, Agent Hotchner would very likely still be practising law.”

Hotch had been a lawyer?

She could see that.

Gideon continued, quieter now. “And Dr. Reid… well, now. If he was nothing but the product of his lineage, then that would be a lot of talent sorely wasted.”

She stared at him, now completely lost. What was that supposed to mean? Demons reached positions of power all the time. A lot of them were naturally charismatic; it was hardly shocking. Hell, there were three demons seated on the Senate that she knew of. Reid’s heritage shouldn’t have caused any disadvantage to him. She had the faintest inkling he was hinting at something, probing. Searching for some reaction from her to indicate, what? That she knew what Reid was? That she _cared_ what Reid was?

Or, did he still think she couldn’t work well with him?

She swallowed back the nerves that threatened to rise and smiled blankly. Her mother’s polished smile. She had no doubt he’d see straight through it. “We were going to train, sir?”

Whatever he’d seen in her reaction, he seemed satisfied. “Indeed. I’ve seen examples of your defensive rune work; you’re correct in that it is exemplary. How is your offensive casting?” Terrible. Her expression gave that away without her answering. “You may be put into a position where your gun isn’t enough to keep you or your team members safe. We’ll work on that. This room is shielded, you won’t harm me or anything in here.” He held up a chess piece, a queen, twisting it so the light caught the edges. “Obtain this chess piece. I will be doing my best to stop you. Good luck.”

She took a deep breath, settled back onto her heels, and rested her fingers against her palm, ready to tap out the spell-patterns she’d spent agonising nights memorizing during her schooling. She was under no misconceptions that this was going to be easy.

But she loved a challenge.

 

* * *

 

**Not-Elf:** **Are you awake still? S. R.**

**To Not-Elf:** **I’m awake. Contemplating never going into work again after the beat-down I got from Gideon. You didn’t tell me he was *that* good.**

**Not-Elf:** **Knock, knock. S. R.**

“You know,” she said, as she slid open the window and leaned out, “this could be construed as being very creepy.”

He blinked and adjusted his perch on the railing of the fire escape, his long fingers sliding elegantly along the rust-coated metal. It made her feel sick to see him sitting there so calmly, obvious to the six-story drop underneath if his balance shifted ever so slightly the wrong way. “Well, it’s considered socially acceptable to knock on your door, if perhaps a little rude to do so unannounced. Is the window so different?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Reid, it’s one in the morning. Socially acceptable was five hours ago.”

“Is it?” He looked startled, turning on the spot to glance up at the overcast night sky, scanning the clouds for the moon. She twitched as she pushed back the desire to lunge out and grab him before he could pitch backwards. “I must have lost track of time.”

_Doing what?_ She eyed him curiously. Even in the dim light from her window, he looked better than he had the day before. Refreshed somehow, as though he’d spent the last twelve hours sleeping deeply. The purple shadows were gone, his face relaxed, even as he let go of the railing and pulled a face at the rust-orange streaks across his palm. She wished she looked half as alert.

“Well, you were right,” she announced, drawing his attention back to her. “Gideon doesn’t bite.”

Reid grinned widely, rubbing his hand on his thigh, clearly fighting the desire to laugh and losing. “Of course he’s that good. He’s first circle. There are only three-hundred and seven registered first circle casters in the DC metropolitan area, and he’s the best. Did you get the chess piece?”

She’d suspected he was first circle as soon as he’d smiled blandly at her from across the desk and then rippled the goddamn world around her so that she found herself five feet away from him, and with the queerest sensation that her centre of gravity had just shifted down to her left big toe. Still, Reid _could_ have warned her. “Damn you, what do you think? I mean, what the hell? He didn’t even move. He just stood there rambling about _birds_ and I still couldn’t get near him _._ ”

Reid didn’t even bother holding back his laugh this time, and she glared at him with all the disapproval she could muster. “Oh yes, so funny, Reid. Keep laughing. Why don’t you tell me how to get hold of it then?”

He stopped laughing and widened his eyes. “Err… I um. I haven’t…”

They stared at each other for a moment before it was her turn to smirk. “You haven’t gotten it off him yet either, have you?” she asked slowly.

His sheepish expression was all the answer she needed. She laughed and handed him a cloth to wipe his hands on, her fingers brushing his as he took it.

 

* * *

 

Some cases started with a text. Some started with them walking into the conference room and JJ turning on the plasma. Emily knew that, behind the scenes, almost all of them started with a stack of files on JJ’s desk and her desperately hoping that she was making the right choices.

Nathan Harris started with Reid and ended with him too. It was appropriate, in a way, as well as frightening on a level that left Emily cold if she thought about it too much.

She’d only been working with the BAU for a month and, while intellectually she was absolutely aware that they all had weaknesses, none of them wore them openly. They were easy to overlook. Somehow, she’d managed to forget Reid’s biggest.

Gideon was walking past her desk towards the kitchenette, and she was absently trying to decide which of her stacks of paperwork she could slip into Reid’s intake folder without him noticing, when there was a flurry of frantic movement behind them.

Gideon saw him first and frowned. “What’s wrong?”

She turned. Reid was in the doorway, eyes wide and almost quivering with something that could have been excitement but was more than likely fear. A cold lump settled in the pit of her belly and began to make itself at home, sensing that whatever was going to happen next was nothing good.

Reid looked sick. “I think DC might have a necromancer, and I just let our only lead to him slip away.”

 

* * *

 

Morgan stood close to her while they looked down on the body of the woman Reid had said they’d find. She hated it when Reid was right.

He was right a lot.

“Lots of hesitation marks,” Emily said to him quietly, eyeing the word ‘ _help_ _me’_ carved jaggedly into the victim’s abdomen. The alley stunk of piss and vomit and, underneath it all, the coppery tang of blood. She didn’t envy Morgan his enhanced sense of smell. “He doesn’t want to be killing.”

Morgan eyes were locked on Reid; he was corralled near Hotch and moving about in what Emily could only describe as ‘pacing on the spot’. It was the closest to panicked she’d ever seen him.

“If Reid is right, he doesn’t have a choice,” Morgan replied. She could see his nostrils flaring, scenting the air. The idea of voluntarily inhaling the medley of scents around them made her nose twitch in protest and her stomach groan. “If this kid is thrall-bound, someone is pulling his strings and making him kill.”

Hotch turned his head and said something to Reid, who stilled like he’d been scolded. One of the local police made a noise of barely restrained disgust. “This is what happens when you let demons off-leash,” he commented indifferently. “If you’re not gonna use them, someone else will. And then you get dead hookers and weeks of overtime.”

She froze. There was a low growl to her left; Morgan expressing his displeasure. If he didn’t smack the guy, Emily would. The anger lasted until she glanced over at Reid again, almost unconsciously, and found him staring at the police officer with an expression as though he’d just been slugged in the gut and was struggling to catch his breath.

Then she wasn’t just angry anymore; she was worried as well.

 

* * *

 

She found Reid and Garcia huddled in front of Garcia’s bank of computers, their faces glowing blue as they both gazed intently at the yearbook photos covering the screen.

“Someone has to know this kid is missing,” Reid insisted. “Someone knows he’s gone.”

Garcia turned her head and eyed Emily from over Reid’s shoulder, biting at her lip. Even without her focus on the screens, they continued inputting commands independently, shuffling photos across the displays. “Oh, hon… you know the statistics better than I do. They probably know he’s missing, they’re just…”

“Sixty-three percent of demons bound against their will are never reported missing,” Reid stated, his voice monotonous. “Overall, seventy-eight percent are never freed. Another thirteen percent die when the necromancer is killed. Of the nine percent that are saved, more than half commit suicide within a year of being released.” He swivelled around and looked at Emily plaintively. “Did you know there’s been three separate Bills drafted in the last two decades presenting the case that demons are too dangerous to be left free-bound?”

“I know,” Emily responded quietly, not looking away from his fixed regard. “And it’s been shot down every time. Everyone has a basic right to freedom, Spencer. Everyone.” _Even you,_ she thought. _Especially you._

“Demons believe that if they report their family and friends missing that people will use it as an excuse to take away our rights.” Reid was fidgeting on the spot as he spoke, tapping intently at Garcia’s desk in an uneven beat with his fingers. Emily wanted to lay her hand over his, pin it down, hold him close. “So, this kid has a family out there somewhere, wondering if he’s ever coming home, and they’re too scared to ask for help. Doesn’t that seem _wrong_ to you?” She knew that that wasn’t the question he actually wanted to ask. He already knew the answer to that one.

“We’re going to find him,” she said firmly, and Garcia nodded along. “We’ll bring him home.” _And we’ll burn the bastard who did this to him._

“Maybe.” Reid closed his eyes. The beat increased to a manic rate. “But he’s never going to be the same again, is he?”

 

* * *

 

“Are you aware of your son’s whereabouts?”

Emily leaned against the wall next to the window looking in on Sarah Harris’ questioning. The woman’s face was drawn, her skin blotchy from what Emily assumed had been days of crying. It almost drew attention away from the slender wings furled tightly against her back, tucked around her shoulders as though to shield her from Morgan’s regard. Almost. Emily’s gaze kept slipping to those delicate appendages before darting back to Reid wonderingly. He stood the same as he always did, slightly stooped to hide his height, with no sign of weight on his back. Did he have wings like that? If he did, he kept them well glamoured. He was adept at hiding them.

Why would he hide them?

“He’s at a friend’s,” Sarah repeated, the only thing she’d said about her son since they’d brought her in. She spoke from behind her hands, continually covering her mouth. “He has lots of friends. He spends lots of time with them while I’m… I’m working…” She burst into tears again, and Emily saw Reid flinch.

“Dr. Harris,” Reid said softly, stepping forward with his hands splayed open at his side. Emily knew that body language. _Trust me. I’m your friend._ “We’re only here to help. Anything you know, anyone Nathan has been speaking to or maybe he mentioned has been hanging around; it will all help us find the person responsible for taking him.”

The tears were still wet on her thin cheeks when Sarah stopped crying and narrowed her gaze at Reid. She didn’t say anything, just kept staring, her hands dropping away from her face and lying limp like dead things in front of her. Reid didn’t look away.

“I was a familiar once,” she said finally, turning back to Morgan. “You know, they say that every demon should take a familial-bond with a mage. They say, ‘oh, you need a mage to keep you safe.’ They talk about how _fulfilling_ it is and how _caring_ mages are. Apparently, no one told my mage that. He used to get drunk and hurt me, in every way you could imagine. If I protested, he told me he’d sell both Nathan and I, just a baby then, into thraldom. That with him I might be beaten and assaulted, but I’d still have my own mind. Have you ever been a familiar, Dr. Reid?”

Reid’s answer was almost inaudible. “No.”

“Have you ever been bound?”

“No.”

“Then you’re clearly under the mistaken assumption that you are in control of your own destiny.” She slumped in the chair, the life vanishing from her bearing in an instant and leaving her a desolate shell. “I’m a doctor, agents. I’m a free-bound demon who works as a doctor, one of the highest status jobs our society has. And yet no one lifted a finger to save me then. Why should I believe you’ll do otherwise for my son now?”

Emily saw Morgan shift, opening his mouth ready to move the weight of the questioning off of Reid’s shoulders, but Reid inched forward again. “When did you dissolve your familial bond?”

Dr. Harris’s gaze didn’t lift from the desk. “I didn’t. The mage died. When Nathan was nine.”

“Natural causes?”

Emily heard Hotch make a soft noise behind her right as Sarah Harris looked away, her face flushing guiltily and wings drawing even tighter around her. “He just died.”

 

* * *

 

“It’s not easy to thrall-bind a demon.” Reid was pacing again, his expression fierce and hair chaotic from where he’d been running his fingers through it. “A creature’s natural state is to seek freedom. In some countries, this is recognised to such a point that even attempting to escape from incarceration isn’t in itself a crime; instead, it’s seen as a natural response to captivity. For a necromancer to overcome that, they’re fighting against every part of a demon’s instincts and desires and overcoming them with their own.”

“So, it has to be someone powerful?” Emily asked, trying to think back to the few courses she had taken on demons. Demonology wasn’t her major, none had covered binding. Familial bonds, sure, but they were simple and every day and nothing like what Sarah Harris had been subjected to. Just thinking of that breach of trust made Emily feel sick and long to hold Sergio close. She curled her hand over her right wrist, over one of the few visible tattooed runes she wore openly; the one that symbolised the oath she’d taken to her familiar almost two decades ago. The simplest of designs. His name and hers tied invisibly to the carefully traced runes that would call him if she needed him. And, visibly, a string of Latin under the rune. _‘Nemo nisi per amicitiam cognoscitur’._ A reminder of what a familial bond was to a mage: _‘No one learns except by friendship.’_

“Not always.” They turned to look at Gideon. “You can be weak in magical ability, but powerful enough mentally to overcome a demon, especially a young one.”

“It’d be even easier if it was someone in a position of power over Nathan—someone he was naturally inclined to trust. Letting people close is, in itself, a vulnerability.” Reid deliberately looked away from her as he said this, and the lump in her stomach grew.

Morgan spoke up from where he was nose deep in a file about Nathan and his mother that Garcia had put together. “Hey, he’s only been missing for, what? A week or so? He was at school last Monday, then from Tuesday onward he’s gone. Don’t these things take time to kick in? I mean, it’s a hefty spell. Say the guy who snatched him is a pro—binding still takes hours. If he’s not good at it, it could take days. Add in the time it takes for the necromancer to recover, more days, and Nathan is still going to be fighting that bond with everything he’s got.”

“Yet we have bodies appearing only four days after Nathan disappeared. Which hardly seems enough time for the spell to have even set, let alone for Nathan’s will to have been eroded enough that he can be forced into murder. Reid?” Hotch frowned as he spoke, his brow creasing.

Reid looked uncomfortable as all gazes turned to him. “Well… the timeline still fits… if, ah…”

“If Nathan isn’t morally opposed to murder,” Gideon finished. “If he’s killed before. He might not be okay with killing outside of the man who made him and his mother’s life a nightmare, but his fundamental aversion to killing is already compromised.”

Silence. Reid looked at his shoes and nodded, oddly still and hunched into himself. Emily fought the overwhelming desire to hug him, he just looked so… woeful.

“Okay,” Hotch said tiredly. “Profile on Nathan Harris. Morgan, JJ, you speak to his classmates. Reid, with me. We’re going to speak to his mother again. Prentiss, you keep narrowing down mages strong enough to be illicitly practicing necromancy within DC with Garcia.”

Gideon stood. “And I’ll be finding out more about our first victim,” he said coolly, staring directly at Reid. “We find him, you hear me, everyone? No matter what he’s done under this guy’s influence, we have no proof of him committing a crime under his own behest. He’s an innocent until proven otherwise, and we protect the innocent.”

Emily was halfway out the door so she couldn’t hear Gideon’s reply, but she heard Reid’s question. It was probably the most borderline insubordinate tone she’d ever heard from him, and she’d have been delighted under any other circumstances to see this show of backbone.

“And if he’s not innocent? Who protects him then, Gideon?”

 

* * *

 

They found Ronald Weems first, part of the ‘Decency Watch’ advocating for ‘Cleaning up the Streets’. Apparently, scattering it with the remains of the women he forced Nathan to brutalize was ‘cleaning’. He’d spoken at Nathan’s school. Had struck up a friendship with him, invited him to meetings.

Had bound him and used him as a tool to kill.

And he swore that he’d done nothing wrong, that he’d never touched any of the dead women. When they mentioned Nathan, he lawyered up. Even Hotch seemed to be barely suppressing anger. Emily noted that when they made the arrest, Hotch left Reid at the Bureau. She wondered if that was for Weems’ sake, or for Reid’s. She was willing to bet that Reid wouldn’t have taken being benched well.

Nathan had slipped his binds just long enough to find Reid on the subway, to tip him off to what was happening. If he hadn’t, Emily wondered what his life would be like. If they would have saved him.

If they would have even known he needed saving.

Using Weems, they found Nathan. As soon as Emily saw the gold spellwork twisted up Nathan’s thin arms, tight enough to bruise and sharp enough to slice into his skin and leave bloody furrows, she decided that if it was the last thing she did, this crime would not be forgotten.

Nathan fought them because he had to, he had no choice, and he cried while he did so. She wasn’t entirely sure what Gideon did, but she was glad he did it quickly because the blank look in Nathan’s eyes as he threw a blistering curse at his saviours would haunt her for months to come. Nathan crumpled even while Morgan yelled in pain.

They brought him in alive. Not free, not yet, but he would be.

“I’ll be with him and Weems most of the night undoing the binding,” Gideon told them as they gathered in the conference room, the smell of sweat and the bitter aftertaste of curses coating their throats and tongues. Emily wanted a shower, her bed, her cat. She wanted to go home and sleep and recover from this day, because she was exhausted to her bones and even her magic was tired. “You may as well all go home and rest. I’ve organised tomorrow off, so we have a long weekend—recuperate. I’ll see you all on Monday.”

Another day over. Emily watched her team as they filed slowly out of the room: Gideon to a sleepless night fighting magic that was as opposed to his own as it was possible for it to be, Hotch already thinking of his family. Reid, who practically shot out of the room as though the hounds of hell were on his heels with Garcia determinedly following him. JJ, who smiled at her exhaustedly, finally looking shaken by the events of the case. Morgan with a thick salve over his cheek where the curse-work had skimmed him. So close to tragedy.

Nathan and his mother in the holding cells, their lives forever altered.

It didn’t feel like they’d won this one.

 

* * *

 

She stopped to get her paperwork in order before the weekend, and that was where Hotch found her, slumped at her desk and too weary to face walking to the elevator, to her car, driving, unlocking her home.

“Are you okay?” Hotch stood over her desk, looking down at her. He almost looked concerned, or as close to it as she thought his face could manage. “You’ve been quiet. Reserved.”

She straightened quickly and swallowed around the stomach lump that had decided to go on holiday to her throat. “Yes. It’s just… I’ve never seen a thrall-bound demon before. It was…”

“Confronting. There’s a good reason necromancy is illegal. This is one of them. Ronald Weems will be facing the death penalty for this, Prentiss. This is not a common occurrence.”

His reassurances only cemented the knowledge that he knew exactly what she was obsessing over. “Reid…”

“Is well aware of his vulnerabilities both in the field and out of it. The Bureau has taken steps to ensure the safety of all of its agents and employees, human, demon or otherwise. What you saw out there today, what Weems did to Nathan—that is not and will never be Reid’s future.” Emily wasn’t the kind of person to take stock in empty promises and false reassurances, and, yet, somehow, when Hotch said it, there was no doubt in her mind it was true.

The lump shrunk, just that little bit, and she could breathe again.

 

* * *

 

Saturday afternoon and she hadn’t heard from Reid since they’d left work two days before. It wasn’t hugely unusual, sometimes he went days without contact outside of work, but she was worried. And Sergio had finally gotten sick of her fussing over him and locked himself in his room, refusing to come out and be ‘mothered’ anymore. She was getting twitchy.

**To Einstein:** **Hey. How are you?**

Silence. Complete radio-silence and, at the end of that radio-silence, she knew there was an idiot genius drowning himself in blame for something that was entirely not his fault. She reminded herself that the idiot genius was an adult and that she needed to let him fight his own battles, and then proceeded to spend the day with one eye on her cell, twitching towards it every time she imagined it was buzzing. She felt like a damn teenager. She was almost glad Sergio couldn’t see her.

She was _really_ glad Morgan couldn’t.

When her cell finally indicated a message, she almost flung herself at it. Two messages, actually. Neither were Reid.

Neither were good.

**Garcia:** **Em are you with Reid? We were hanging out and he was fine and everything was good but then something happened and now hes gone and hes not with Gideon and ohmygod Em plz say hes with you.**

**Bossman:** **Prentiss, Gideon just called. Nathan Harris killed himself tonight. Reid was first on scene, Nathan contacted him. Reid has vanished. If you see him, can you please alert one of us? Thank you.**

Well, shit. She should have known this week wasn’t done fucking with them just yet. And she didn’t even have the slightest clue where to start looking for him. She wasn’t even sure she knew where he lived, or where he went when he wasn’t at work, or if he had friends, or who he’d go to if he was hurting, if he’d go to anyone.

There was a lot she didn’t know about him.

**To Einstein:** **I know what happened. You don’t need to deal with this on your own. I’m here for you. If you need help, you can come to me.**

**Einstein:** **I’m okay. Really, I am. S. R.**

That asshole. So, he _did_ have his cell on him. He was just ignoring them. She tried to convey her irritation by glaring at her cell as though channelling it through to him. Her next text was reckless, a challenge.

**To Einstein:** **Prove it. Come over.**

**Einstein:** **Is that an invitation? S. R.**

**To Einstein:** **To my fire escape. No further. You can have the warm blanket.**

She took a moment to wonder what the hell her life had become when she was organizing to spend the night with her ass in the kitchen sink, when the cell buzzed again. She read the message and her heart tried to leap out of her mouth in a mixed reaction of shock and… something keener.

**Einstein: Only if you’ll share it with me. S. R.**

She didn’t let herself think it through, typing the answer out in seconds, and only letting her thumb hover over the _send_ button for a moment before tapping down with finality.

**To Einstein: Okay.**

When he replied with nothing but the words ‘ _smiley face S. R.’,_ she decided that she’d completely lost her mind.

That night, when she hesitantly wrapped the blanket around them both and they sat on the escape watching black and white Doctor Who episodes through her kitchen window with their sides pressed against each other, she decided that she probably didn’t care if she was mad for wanting this. He was a long line of heat from her thigh to her hip and up to her shoulder, and it was delicious and endlessly distracting.

When the disk ended and, instead of getting up to change it, she slipped onto his lap and curled around him like she belonged there, she knew that this was what she’d wanted all along. Their first kiss wasn’t anything special, it didn’t knock her socks off, and she wasn’t going to swing off the fire escape and sing a ditty about it, but it was gentle and awkward and everything he was. Their second was better.

She lost count after that.

She shifted slightly so her weight settled evenly across him and he wrapped the blanket around her shoulders more securely, pulling her close, finding her lips again even as he cupped a hand around the back of her head and threaded it through her hair. His free hand held hers, fingers tangled together, and she thought her heart was going to stop from the slow burn of this tension.

They didn’t have sex. Emily amused herself by imagining his reaction if she’d suggested _that_ on the fire escape, even if she had no intention of actually treating her neighbours to that particular show, as well as being somewhat hypocritical to sleep with him and give him that trust over her body when she wouldn’t even let him in her home. But, she did fall asleep in his lap with the Who theme humming in the background and her head on his shoulder, inhaling the scent of his shampoo, surrounded by the rhythm of traffic below and with his arms around her.

In the morning, she was sore and aching, and he was still there. Probably twice as sore as her and with a dead leg to boot. She woke and the sun was hot on their shoulders, the blanket had slipped down, and he was asleep still with his neck tilted back and his mouth slightly open. She pressed her lips to his and tasted the smile he’d left on the corners of it.

She thought maybe that this was the beginning of something good.


	4. Deal

The worst part about working at the BAU was that they were always on call. And right when they all needed a break the most, while Nathan still hung over them like a bad omen, was exactly when they didn’t get one. There was a fifty/fifty chance that her cell buzzing in the middle of the night was a good thing. That also meant there was a fifty/fifty chance it was a bad one.

It could be Reid forgetting the time and informing her about manatees’ vestigial fingernails, or it could be JJ apologising sweetly and then informing her of vicious murders all within the same breath.

Sunday night was the latter, although, even through text, JJ sounded confused.

**JJ: Morning, Em. The week’s starting early. Boss wants us in ASAP.**

_“Work? Again?”_ Sergio asked, uncurling from his warm furrow in the blankets and blinking up at her. She didn’t know why he didn’t sleep in his own room, he knew chances were she’d be waking him up at some ridiculous hour. _“Bad one?”_

“They’re all bad, Serge,” she answered quietly, her phone making the dull _boop_ that symbolised her message being sent. “Are you coming this time?”

**To JJ: That doesn’t sound good. Did he say why?**

_“I think you’re capable of handling this on your own.”_ Sergio punctuated his snide reply by oozing up the bed to perch on her pillow, ready to slip into the warm spot when she vacated it. _“Besides, why would you possibly need me when you have a demon who can do everything I can?”_

“He’s not half as good at coughing up hairballs as you are,” she teased the cat affectionately, tickling his chin and throwing the covers back. “Don’t be jealous. It’s not a flattering look on you.”

_“Hmph.”_

Her phone beeped again.

**JJ: Nope. Just to be prepared.**

Oh yeah. This was going to be another bad one.

 

* * *

 

Hotch walked into the conference room with a file and the grimmest expression she’d ever seen on him. That was saying something, since she was pretty sure his default setting was ‘eternally stoic’. Gideon followed, looking as placid as ever, but his eyes stayed fixed on Hotch’s back. Emily scanned the room. Her co-workers’ gazes were all locked on Hotch, and she noted the bevy of tired eyes and very-slightly-out-of-place clothing. They were all worried. The atmosphere was prohibitive. Well, everyone except JJ. She was still as perfectly presented as ever, as though she’d breezed straight out of bed and into work without so much as a hair being out of place, taking everything this job threw at her with a calm poise.

“In 1998, I worked the Boston Reaper case,” Hotch said, and the silence that filled the room was thick enough that Emily could hear the soft rhythm of Reid’s breathing next to her. “It was my first case for the BAU as lead profiler. And, as you all know, he was never caught.”

“Never caught?” Reid said, sitting upright and squinting slightly. Emily could practically hear the cogs in his mind whirring as his brain fired up. “We don’t even have a profile in our systems for him, do we? I’ve never seen one in Archives.”

“Maybe you saw it and forgot?” Garcia asked from the corner of her seat. She was fidgeting, out of place in the conference room, and kept glancing nervously at the blank plasma behind her. Reid turned very slowly and blinked at her. “Oh, right.” Garcia giggled, her voice shaky. “You’re you. You don’t forget. Why am I here Hot—sir? I mean, I know why I’m here, but why am I _here_. In this room. With the… ick.”

“Do we have ick?” Morgan cut in, swivelling around to look at the screen. Hotch’s face barely shifted as he clicked a button on the remote and the plasma flared to life. “What’s going on, Hotch?”

Emily had seen a lot of things in her life. She’d worked Interpol. She’d been in the BAU for a month now. She’d even seen magic casting gone horribly wrong—they all had. Their teachers weren’t shy about showing them what exactly could happen if they weren’t careful with their spellwork.

This was on a whole new level.

“He’s back,” Hotch said quietly, staring at the photos of the massacred victims with his eyes burning. “The Boston Reaper is back. And he’s taunting us. Taunting me.”

 

* * *

 

“He’s a power manipulator. When killing wasn’t giving him the buzz he needed, he switched to manipulating the police. The ultimate sign of control. ‘You can’t chase me or I’ll kill again’.” Morgan tapped at the page, deep in thought. The others were all lost in their own minds as well.

“He’s a shadow mage,” Emily said, leaning past JJ to pick up the photos of the first victims and examining the body. “These injuries, they weren’t all caused by a knife.”

“The biggest were.” Hotch watched her as he spoke, clearly encouraging her to continue. “He stabbed one of his victims over forty times. He also shot and bludgeoned them. Many of the smaller marks were obscured by the overkill.”

Obscured, maybe, but still there. “Shadow magic,” she said firmly, ignoring Hotch’s raised eyebrow. “See these odd bruises? I bet if we look closely they’ll be formed by dozens of tiny slices, all below the upper layer of skin. It’s a nasty technique, but very effective.” Doyle had used it. Her skin crawled at the memory of it. But, she wasn’t saying that.

“Most shadow mages use shadows as shields. The art was actually created as a non-offensive fighting style used to tire the opponent out and then incapacitate them without injury. Over time, there were perversions to the art that used shadows as weapons or bindings but none that caught on or became popular.” Reid leaned in close over the back of the chair she was sitting in, his hair hanging limply and almost obscuring his view of the photo she was holding. “It’s not a bad theory. They wouldn’t have noticed it back then; shadow magic is a lesser known magical practise. It doesn’t help us narrow it down much though, shadow mages are fairly…”

“Stubbornly isolated,” Gideon finished. “We know. We’re intimately acquainted with the sort.”

Emily hid a grin by ducking her head, letting her hair curtain forward and hide her mouth. _David Rossi_. It was a pity he was retired. If they were hunting a rogue shadow mage, it would have been nice to have the most decorated user of the art by their sides. If the man was half of the legend, anyway.

“I was going to say, private,” Reid said, blinking owlishly and tossing his hair back with an impatient flick of his head. “But uh, isolated works… well, they might help us. If we prove this is shadow work. They don’t generally like negative publicity.”

Hotch was shaking his head. “We would have seen it if it was shadow magic. We did have Dave on our team then, and he wouldn’t have missed something like that.”

Emily wondered which of them was going to say it first, out of her, JJ, or Morgan, because she could see the same thought on all of their faces. Reid looked oblivious. Gideon beat them: “We all have our blind-spots,” he stated. “Even Dave. He might not have wanted to see. And it does fit—the Reaper gets off on control. What could be more controlling than literally slipping his magic under their skin? He’s killing them from the inside out.”

Emily shuddered.

“Dark affinity then?” Morgan asked, changing the subject as Hotch’s eyebrows drew together in a frown. “Shadow magic is a dark art, right?”

Emily kept her mouth closed. She didn’t need to say anything, she was pretty sure Reid’s fetish was correcting people, and she didn’t want to take away his greatest joy. It would be like taking candy from a sugar-addicted demon.

Exactly like that, actually.

“A common misconception is that dark magic equals evil or immoral,” Reid said eagerly. She could feel him almost bouncing on the spot through the chair. JJ covered her mouth as though to hide a sneeze, her eyes creasing at the corners. “When it really just refers to how to a mage or magical being obtains their magic—light magic is knowledge based and uses stable power sources such as fixed natural power wells or familial bonds. Dark magic is more, err… well, gut based I guess. Erratic. It draws from unstable power sources such as the magic users’ own life forces or living creatures around them. Even more unpredictable natural wells such as volcanoes or storms can be exploited. Both affinities have their benefits and drawbacks.” He paused before continuing, now sounding less certain. “Having said that, I agree that he’s a dark affined mage. Not because of the shadow magic, that can be light based, but because…” He trailed off. Emily could see his cheeks flushing. If his ears were visible under that mop of hair, she’d bet they’d be glowing like beacons as well.

“Because there’s no smoke without fire, and dark magic is a lot easier to misuse,” Hotch completed. “You can’t deny that a lot of the arts practised within it have elements of compulsion.”

“No, I can’t,” Reid said quietly. He avoided everyone’s gaze, glancing out the window of the jet almost warily. For someone who wore his heart so openly, Spencer Reid had a whole heap of baggage he kept hidden. She could relate to that.

 

* * *

 

It hadn’t been a good first day on the case. Two more dead; two more names that she knew Hotch was quietly adding to his personal list of those he’d failed. They all had that list. She knew she did. She suspected that Reid did too. She also had a firm suspicion that his was a lot longer than hers. He seemed the type to hoard guilt like a dragon did gold, keeping it close to his chest and defending it jealously.

Every action the Reaper had taken so far suggested that his focus had shifted to Hotch. She knew exactly where an obsession like that could take them. If they didn’t stop him, the Reaper would bring Hotch down in flames and drag them down with him. She didn’t intend on letting that happen, and she doubted the rest of the team would either. That wasn’t how they worked. They didn’t get to have personal vendettas with unsubs, not even Hotch.

For some reason, this train of thought had led her to padding quietly down the hallway of their hotel on the sides of her bed-socked feet; passing Morgan’s door with a careful knowledge of his superior hearing, and JJ’s with the wry thought that even if the elf did hear her, she probably wouldn’t say anything. Not that Emily was willing to test that theory.

She tapped on his door lightly, trusting that he’d know it was her. Judging from the eager rustle of movement towards the door, he knew. Or he’d just ordered late night room service.

“I thought you said it wasn’t socially acceptable to visit people past eight p.m.,” he said, opening the door and smiling warmly at her. She took a long moment to look him up and down, raising an eyebrow at the brightly patterned flannel pyjamas he was wearing. Covered in… dancing toothbrushes.

_Spencer Reid, you fucking dork,_ she thought with glee, but she didn’t say it out loud. Judging from the self-conscious way he slipped back to put the door between her and him, he knew what she was thinking anyway.

“I’m the exception that proves the rule,” she replied, oozing her way past the door and letting herself in. He opened his mouth with the kind half-smug half-over excited expression he always wore before correcting someone, and she shut him up quickly by nudging the door shut with her hip and pulling him down to her height by the collar of his preposterous pyjamas.

“That’s technically an incorrect usage,” he mumbled into her mouth. She rolled her eyes under closed lids. “An exception should be stated from which a rule can be inferred.” He punctuated each word with increasingly eager kisses, working his way down her mouth and along her jawline, his hands tracing absentminded patterns on her sides. “In this case, you would say—”

“Reid,” she said sharply, almost hissing the word out as he found her ear and nipped at the shell of it. “Shush.” His back thudded against the wall, the weird artwork that all hotels seemed to emulate rattling in its frame at the impact.

“But what if this knowledge could save your life one day?” he protested, breaking away from her and widening his eyes in almost sincere concern. She broke that gaze before she actually convinced herself he was being serious and slipped under his chin to mouth at his neck, hearing his breath catch even as he tried to keep talking. “What if, say, you get caught by a serial killer with… _ah_ … an obsession for correct… Emily, you’re making it hard to focus.”

She pressed her knee between his legs, forcing them apart and bringing her hips flush with his. “Am I?” she teased, biting gently at the delicate protrusion of his collarbone. So. Damn. Skinny. She could probably bench press him if she was so inclined.

He made a rough noise that might have been a laugh, sliding an arm around her and settling his hand on the small of her back. “Innuendo is the lowest form of wit,” he said, before rolling his hips forward gently into hers and _oh_. He wasn’t hard, not quite, but he certainly wasn’t soft and the loose cotton pyjamas didn’t leave much to her, admittedly fantastic, imagination.

Jesus Christ, if he did that again they were going to end up dry humping against the wall like a pair of horny teenagers because _that_ , that was going into the part of her memory bank that she stored up for quiet nights in her bed with her eyes closed and one hand between her thighs. Which was insane, because they’d only mostly just kissed, and she’d never before been halfway into someone’s bed just from that. But yet, if he asked it of her, she knew she’d jump into his in a heartbeat and see if his precise fashion of kissing extended to his bedroom.

And that was nothing like her.

“Hotch is on the other side of this wall,” she said finally, pausing to catch her breath and gather her thoughts before the hungry lizard-brain that was trying to tell her to see how quickly she could remove the dancing toothbrushes from current proceedings won out. “And if he’s awake, he’s going to be wondering why you’re trying to tap out Morse code through the drywall.”

“I didn’t start this, you did,” he grumbled, breaking away from her and standing back. He was… well, aroused. Almost sinfully so, with the way his bow-shaped lips looked after she’d been kissing them, red and slightly swollen. Hair mussed, pyjamas askew; somehow, he made dancing toothbrushes look like the hottest thing she’d seen all year.

What the hell was he doing to her?

She wondered what he saw when he looked at her, in her own much more modest pyjamas and with all her make-up washed off. She wasn’t the insecure type, but even the most confident woman would feel a thrill of nerves at facing a man ten years her junior and looking like _that_.

“Beautiful,” he said suddenly, gently, stepping forward and cupping a hand under her chin, examining her closely. “God, Emily, you have no idea.” He leaned and she thought he was going to kiss her again, but instead he just wrapped his arms around her and held her like he had nothing better to do with his night. “You need to decide right now how you want this night to go.”

“Oh?” she asked, tucking her nose against his shoulder and breathing in the bitter-rich scent of him. It was tempered by the smell of his washing detergent and a slight hint of soap, but her gut still twisted slightly at it, even as the heat between her legs made it hard to focus on his words. “I don’t think I’m in the position to be clear-headed.”

“Mmm,” he hummed against her hair, his fingers tracing gently over her back. She thought of reaching to his back, slipping a hand under his shirt and seeing what she found. She ignored that and kept her hands firmly to his front, respecting his boundaries. She thought, briefly, of slipping a hand lower. She knew what she’d find there, but his reaction to that was what would really intrigue her.

“You should probably go back to your room and sleep since we have to be up in six hours,” Reid said finally. “And, also, because if you stay here much longer, we’re very probably going to end up having sex, and there’s a part of me that very, very much wants to know what that’s like.” It wasn’t a particularly seductive way of informing her what was on his mind, but it did bring a vivid flash of _holy shit this is what that would lookfeelsound like_ in her mind that came complete with a dull aching feeling of emptiness between her legs that suggested she take him up on that offer.

At some point, he’d slipped in under her defences in every way possible and he proved that now.

_“Do we really want our first time to be in a hotel room nine point seven feet away from our boss and having to muffle our voices so he doesn’t hear us?”_ Reid’s voice murmured into her mind directly, and _fuckfuck_ he still hadn’t worked out how to separate his emotions from his voice so it brought a heady rush of his own burning arousal and the sudden knowledge that she wasn’t the only one vividly imagining what he’d feel like inside her. She thought maybe she’d made a noise, but he caught it with his mouth, even as she shivered through the sudden feedback-loop of both their excitement combining. _“Because I don’t know about you, but I want to hear you come.”_

“Stop,” she panted into his chest. “I… I can feel your thoughts… emotions. Shit.”

He smiled against her mouth, and she realized that he absolutely knew what he was doing. _“Oops,”_ he sent, and his voice still felt like melty-sweetness on her tongue but it brought a darker hint of velvet-texture with it that made her brain ache. _“My mistake.”_

She could fucking _taste_ his insincerity and that was about the point she realized that if, _when_ , they did have sex, this was going to be a mind-blowing addition to it.

He didn’t respond, just made a low noise and sent a very, very detailed thought of him pressing her against the wall and sliding her pants down in one swift movement, slipping his hand between… She choked back a moan, her hips stuttering against his, seeking friction, even as he held her close and did nothing but think really loudly at her.

He was fucking getting her off with his _brain_ and she wasn’t even that surprised.

She wasn’t going to say that out loud with Hotch in the next room. For all she knew, he had his damn ear pressed against the wall waiting for something he could write them up for. All bosses got a sick sense of satisfaction from issuing warnings; Hotch was no exception. And, she really needed to stop thinking about Hotch now because she’d never had a hair-trigger in bed before, but she was already coasting on the edge of _holy shit I’m about to come without even taking my pants off._ _“Spencer, I don’t think this counts as having sex you know.”_

Mistake, because talking back to him meant she got the full loop of his thoughts and he chose that exact moment to imagine the feel of him pushing into her for the first time, and _that_ was weird indeed; both the idea of what she felt like to him and what he’d feel like in her crowding her simultaneously. He also imagined the noise he’d make, a stuttering groan, and she suddenly wasn’t so sure he hadn’t made that noise in real life.  

Then, he actually _did_ make the noise, choking back a word that could have been _please_ but also could have very likely been the beginning of her name; it was all she needed before she was shaking against him, her mouth and nose pressed against his shoulder, and clenching around a cock that she could _feel_ in her mind but that wasn’t actually there. It was both the most intense orgasm she’d had in a very long time and the most unsatisfying, and she was left breathing heavily against him with a dull ache between her legs that suggested very politely that she rectify that issue with the real thing. The real thing that was inches from her, and at this point probably not adverse to the idea.

“I hate you,” she muttered, kissing his one of the toothbrushes on his shoulder with a tenderness she knew she’d think back at later and worry over. She shifted, flinching in distaste at the slickness of her poor underwear against her inner thigh, and the constant throbbing reminder of that dissatisfaction.

“No, you don’t,” he replied, and his voice was strained and husky. She glanced up at him and almost groaned at his expression, the heavy-lidded eyes and partly open lips suggesting that he hadn’t quite expected the feedback of her orgasm to be anywhere near as distracting as it had been. There was nothing soft about him now and when she glanced down she could see him straining against the elastic of his pants, clearly uncomfortable. Oh, how the tables had turned.

“Need a hand?” she offered with a smirk.

He shook his head halfway before turning it into an uncertain nod, looking so lost that she actually felt sorry for him. _“Turnabout is fair play, Spence,”_ she whispered, slipping into his mind before very swiftly hitting him with a memory of her fingers inside herself, rocking against them, coming with his name on her lips. He jerked, twitched, and she was pretty sure almost yelped her name in shock before turning it into a groan that he muffled against her hair. She pulled out his mind quickly, not needing to relive _this_ quite yet, but it didn’t matter since he was pressed so close to her she could feel him coming anyway.

_Your poor pyjamas,_ she thought wryly to herself, even as she slid a hand down to run over the softening bulge in the front of them, the dampness spreading on the thin cotton, and there was another memory to hoard because she hadn’t made someone finish in their damn pants since high school and it was unexpectedly titillating. She was pretty sure this wasn’t what the artist who’d originally drawn the dancing toothbrushes had planned for them when he’d carefully sketched out their innocent-but-slightly-maniacal grins, but she decided to pretend that he’d have approved.

Spencer’s breathing had slowed, his weight resting more fully on her, and, she swore to god, if he fell asleep standing in the middle of his room like a damn horse, she was going to leave him there. And take pictures. And probably give those pictures, tastefully cropped at the waist of course, to Garcia to blow up and make life-sized cardboard cut-outs of.

“Bed,” she scolded, shaking him. He blinked slowly, his reactions sluggish.

“Join me?” he asked, and _oh_ the plaintive longing in his voice almost shattered her resolve. Now it wasn’t sex she was imagining but waking up in his arms, what he’d look like as he dreamed, of opening her eyes to know he was there, and she wanted it all.

“No,” she said reluctantly. “But I will. Soon. Promise.” She smirked as he nodded sadly. “You might want to get changed before you sleep.”

His mouth quirked. He leaned close and she thought he was going to say something sweet, something that made walking away back to her empty room and emptier bed even more impossible.

“I know that was a memory, Emily Prentiss, not your imagination. And I approve very much of your choice of masturbatory aids,” he murmured into her ear and she flushed, his breath hot and still slightly uneven. “Now go to your room. It’s bad luck to keep people waiting on you.”

That made no sense but, before she could ask him what the hell he meant, he’d slipped into the bathroom and closed the door between them.

 

* * *

 

She knew her room wasn’t empty as soon as she unlocked the door and slid through. She always forgot how much of an asshole her cat could be.

“I thought you said I could deal with this on my own,” she teased him, narrowing her eyes and scanning the apparently empty room for her wayward familiar. “Or did you miss me so terribly you just had to come?”

_“Well,”_ said a smug voice from the bed. The pillow dipped slightly as he shifted his weight, purring and reappearing as a solid black lump of fur on the creamy linen: _“then you managed to completely fail to notice I was here for a whole_ day _. Clearly, you are simply lost without me. Also, you stink. You’re not getting in the bed while you smell like him.”_

Reid’s cryptic comment now made sense. “Reid knew you were here.”

_“He’s clever, for a demon,”_ Sergio admitted reluctantly. _“Sir saw me as well. He just didn’t tell you.”_

“Sir?” It clicked seconds later. “Gideon? Wait, you call him ‘Sir’ and yet I’m still stuck as ‘little witch’?”

_“I have the utmost respect for him. You are just a witch and not a very good one. Now shower, little smelly witch.”_

She should have gotten an owl.

 

* * *

 

Two steps into the Boston precinct the next day with Reid on her heels rambling about the brewing technique the local coffee shop had used on his double mocha frappo-whatever the hell sugar thing he was drinking, and Emily’s heart sank. She could see Hotch and Gideon squaring off in the field office with JJ between them like a referee at a cage match, looking way too stressed for this time of the morning. Morgan was hovering around the edges, looking back and forth with a desperate expression.

“Uh oh,” Reid murmured, pausing. “I don’t want to go in there.”

“Bad luck, sugar,” Emily said. She stopped and shoved him forward. “You’ve got that ‘butter wouldn’t melt on my puppy dog eyes’ look. You go in first.”

He dug his heels into the thin blue carpeting. “What? That’s not even an idiom. You’ve completely… hey! Uh, morning, Hotch. Good morning, Gideon.”

Their esteemed leaders turned as one to face them and, suddenly, it wasn’t funny anymore. Emily had seen the look that Hotch was wearing on a previous colleague's face, right before he’d knocked off work, left his dog at his sister’s, and gone home to spit-start his own service pistol. Judging from Reid’s sharp exhale, he had too.

“What happened?” Emily asked, looking to JJ. Hotch was pale, a man on the brink of destruction. Even Gideon looked positively… rattled.

“He called me last night and offered me the deal,” Hotch snarled, his voice cracking. Emily felt Reid pull away, looking from Hotch to Gideon in a panic. “He offered me the deal, and I practically hung up on him!”

“The Reaper attacked a city bus this morning,” JJ filled them in, her voice soft but firm as she cut over Hotch. “Six passengers and the driver were killed.”

“Because I signed their death warrants.” Hotch looked away, his throat visibly working as he swallowed hard. “This is my fault.”

JJ and Morgan made identical noises of disagreement. Gideon snorted loudly, rolling his eyes. Emily could practically taste the derision rolling off his tongue. “You’re right, Hotch. You essentially walked onto that bus and shot them yourself. You may as well hand in your gun now, I’ll let the families know where to find you so you can personally tell them how sorry you are for not being able to see the future.”

“This isn’t about my ego, Jason.”

“It’s _entirely_ about your ego, Aaron! He’s playing you, getting into your head, and you’re rolling out the welcome mat!”

There was silence except for the two men’s heavy breathing and the roaring sound of Emily’s own heartbeat in her ears. She hoped that none of the local PD had decided to come in early and were watching this. The only thing Hotch would take worse than losing his control in front of the team would be losing control in front of the team _and_ the people they needed to trust them implicitly to do their jobs.

Morgan interrupted, his voice oddly gently. “Hotch, man, we’re just human.”

“Speak for yourself,” mumbled JJ. Morgan nudged her with his shoulder, frowning. She looked up, her blue eyes wide and innocent. If Emily hadn’t known the keen mind that ticked behind those eyes, she’d have been sucked into that beguiling look as well. “He’s right, Aaron. We can’t bear the guilt of every sick thing the people we hunt try to pin back on us. That’s how they win. They make us second guess ourselves, break us down. It’s our job to not let them.”

Hotch’s chest moved with one last deep, calming breath, and his face cleared. Instant control restored. Emily was envious. “You’re correct. I’m sorry, everyone. I allowed my emotions to get the better of me, and that was entirely unprofessional and not at all conducive to our case. It’s time we got to work showing this man that we don’t play by his rules.”

Gideon said nothing, even as every one of the rest of them tripped over themselves trying to reassure Hotch that there was no damage done.

When Emily slipped out the room after, Reid followed. “You realize that while we were… wrapped up in ourselves… last night, Hotch and Gideon were looking down on seven victims,” he murmured in her ear, making her jump. She hadn’t even heard him behind her.

She turned on her heel and scowled at the mulish expression on his face. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Reid. What, is self-recrimination in the water around here or something? He didn’t call us. He and Gideon went alone—nothing would have changed about last night whether we were in our own beds or not. Don’t do this. Don’t overthink things.”

He looked away, and she saw the exact moment he decided to do just that. “Nevertheless, we were on the job and it was supremely unprofessional of us. What if he did call? Would we have heard it?”

She wanted to grab his arm and shake it, snap him out of the stubborn mood he’d sunk into at the sight of their close-knit team bickering amongst themselves, but they were surrounded by strangers and she couldn’t. “Okay, fine. Yes. We keep our distance on the job, that’s acceptable. We’re adults, we should have been doing that from the beginning. But don’t you _dare_ suggest that we could have changed anything last night, because the last thing Hotch needs is a role-model in shouldering misdirected blame.”

“Okay,” Reid murmured, and promptly vanished. She stared at the spot he’d been standing, wrestling with the warring sensations of wanting to find him and hug him or wanting to be furious with him and storming off. She decided to be an adult about it and quietly walked away as though nothing had happened. This case was getting in all their heads. They needed to close it, and soon.

 

* * *

 

It happened too quickly for her to respond in a way that might have changed what happened. They moved around the location they’d been given to find Foyet before the Reaper did; Detective O’Mara taking point with Emily close on his heels and Morgan pacing slowly behind them. They’d needed a mage. They’d taken Emily.

Emily regretted that.

Everything went pitch black around them, Emily instantly recognising and countering the darkness spell that had been thrown over them. She was quick, the black dispelling around them and letting her see far enough forward that O’Mara was a hazy blur turning back to look at her.

Not quick enough. A gun sounded, and O’Mara fell.

Morgan shouted, her hand burned, and she whirled. In that singular moment between Morgan’s yells shifting to yelps before silencing completely and the Reaper crashing down on her, she made a choice. She pulled her weapon instead of casting. Her offensive magic had always been her weak point.

It was the wrong choice.

He moved and the darkness moved with him. She couldn’t fire because she couldn’t see Morgan, her line of sight wasn’t clear, and by the time she’d gotten her bearings back the shadows had clawed at her legs and brought her down. She knew this feeling; knew what happened next. The shadows bit at her skin, threading their way into her and sharpening, slicing, binding. It itched at first, and then her skin ignited into thousands of points of pain as though she’d shoved her arm into a fire ant colony and held it there.

She thought to herself that she was very likely going to die here.

She thought to herself that Reid was very likely going to be furious at her for that.

And then, she pushed those thoughts away and concentrated on surviving. If she could hold him off, Hotch would already know they were in trouble. He’d already be on his way. Their creds weren’t just pretty patterns after all, he would have felt it as soon as Morgan went down. They would have all felt the burn of his pain, just the same as she had. The pain was good. If it burned, he was hurt. If it went cold…

It wasn’t going to go cold while she was still there to stop it.

The Reaper loomed over her, his face a rippling mask of the shadows he controlled obscuring all his features except for cold, blue eyes. It was the kind of face that children imagined jittering out from under their beds at night, a parody of a human being. Some small part of her noted she was bound and vulnerable and wanted to scream.

She didn’t.

His shadows slipped into her clothes, her own runes activating in a flurry of magic across her body as they fought off the touch of the opposing affinity. She looked down and felt ill; her vest a patchwork of moving darkness, the FBI acronym hidden as his magic split and writhed angrily at the points where her own runes defended her.

_You like your women helpless and alone, huh,_ she thought furiously, snarling at him and struggling to lift her gun against the shadows that gripped it and tried to tear it from her grasp. _Yeah, I’m not helpless, bud. And I’m not… alone._

She dropped the gun, not even pausing to watch it get sucked into the pool of shadows at her knees, sliding a hand to her right wrist and pressing two fingers against the small dark word tattooed there. Her familiar mark, one of the first she’d made back when she was a witch and a diplomat’s daughter and very little else.

And she didn’t often use it because just knowing it was there if she needed it was enough. The last time she’d pressed it was when she was pinned down under a brutal weight and there were teeth at her neck and a claw on her heart, and the cost had been oppressive. There’d been shadows then too.

It spelled out **α** **ἴ** **λουρος** above the Latin wording. Simply, _cat_.

She pressed two fingers to it and Sergio came.

She may have blacked out for a few seconds, but she heard the throbbing feline scream from a creature much larger than her petite little tom appeared to be and the comforting notion of something very large and determined standing over her.

Her last conscious thought was that she wouldn’t trade him for the world.

 

* * *

 

They were back in the bullpen when Foyet’s escape broadcasted. Hotch said nothing, just shut the door to his office and pulled the blinds. Emily stared at his office for a while after, waiting for some sign of movement, receiving none. It was a stark contrast to the almost cheerful-air of relief he’d been wearing since Foyet had been led away in handcuffs.

Reid was already gone. He’d barely let his feet touch the tarmac before vanishing as they landed in Quantico, cementing her suspicion that there was going to be hell to pay later for her dropping the ball.

Looked like it wasn’t going to come from Hotch.

Morgan was too sunk in his own guilt, JJ far too nice to say anything. Garcia was just happy that the same amount of people was coming home as what had left; plus, she enjoyed a reason to fuss over them. Emily had cupcakes coming out of her ears and no idea of when Garcia had had time to make the damn things. Gideon stopped by her desk on the way out. She spoke before he could.

“I messed up,” she admitted instantly. “I messed up and O’Mara died, and it took me and Morgan out of the field right when you needed us the most. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t change anything.”

“It changes plenty,” Gideon said quietly. “It means you know you could have done better. O’Mara may have died no matter what happened. That isn’t on you. But what happened after… we train our people better than that. I don’t know what they taught you in your previous work, but we don’t doubt ourselves. We don’t fall back on guns because our casting is merely ‘passable,’ especially not when faced with unknown mages. You know that now. You’ll do better next time.” And, he walked away, leaving her with the feeling that she’d only been privy to half of a conversation. It was a usual feeling with him.

Morgan leaned back in his chair, his arms liberally covered in both the white plasters the medics had put on his cuts and the SpongeBob Band-Aids Garcia had then stuck overtop. “Foyet isn’t going to just fade away,” he said quietly, and he was watching Hotch’s office too. “Hotch got the better of him, even just temporarily. So did you. He had you at his pleasure, and you still escaped.”

“I didn’t escape, Sergio kept him off us until the team arrived.”

Morgan shrugged and picked at the corner of one of the bandages. “End result is the same. He’s got unfinished business with us now. And with his history? He won’t let it go unfinished for long.”

She thought of the burn of the sigil on her hand as Morgan had fallen; the burning that must have been twice as bad for the rest of her team when she’d fallen alongside him. “Good,” she muttered, biting her lip and tasting blood. “Let him come. We’ll beat him again. No casualties this time.”

Morgan stood, shouldering his bag with a flinch. “Deal.”

She hoped they weren’t being too optimistic.

 

* * *

 

Her face resembled a Picasso painting; purple blotches and blue streaks breaking up the familiar lines and turning it into a painful impression of her reflection. Emily flinched and daubed a numbing cream on the sorest of the bruises, one that splashed vividly from her chin to her ear and was rapidly swelling. She greatly wished that she’d spent more time on her healing runes instead of defence. In moments like these, being a medical magus instead of a field agent was a tantalizing prospect. Sergio twirled around her legs, oddly silent. She let him do it, sensing his distress.

_“I should have been quicker,”_ he said finally, blinking up at her with his tail low to the ground and whiskers drooping. _“I was almost too late.”_

“I should have casted first, shot after,” she reminded him. She nudged him with her foot and held her arms out. He leaped up, curling small against her chest and tucking his head under her chin. A rumbling purr started up in his body, and she felt the wave of calm it brought with it spread intently from where he pressed against her. “If the worst had happened today, it would have been my fault alone. Not yours. Not Morgan’s. Not Hotch’s. Mine.”

Sergio did nothing but purr for a long moment, and she waited for the scolding she knew was coming. _“Be more careful, little witch. Your loss would break my heart.”_

The quiet admission took her breath away. They didn’t do this. They didn’t do raw emotion and affection. She settled for snuggling him closer, inhaling the clean, fresh scent of his fur. “How am I supposed to respond to that?” she teased when she remembered how to speak past the happy kind of sadness his words had brought her.

_“By never bringing it up again. I’ll deny it if you do.”_

Her cell buzzed in her pocket. “I need an arm to answer that,” she told her ridiculous cat, trying to coax him onto her shoulder. He’d gone stiff and unwilling, growing heavier in her arms by the second as though he was deliberately increasing his mass. He probably was. Ass.

_“It’s your demon beau.”_

She stopped and looked at him. “How could you possibly know that?”

_“You don’t have any other friends.”_

“Go to hell, fish-breath.” She dropped him. He landed gracefully, as though he’d known she was going to do it, stalking to the door with his fur fluffed up and his thick tail lashing.

_“Also, I smelled him. He’s at the window again. I’m going to my room. Don’t call me. I want nothing to do with the ruin you bring on us.”_

And with that, he vanished. The purring disappeared as well, and she flinched as the pain washed back over her, no longer being dulled by his cat-like spellcasting. She took her mind off it by pulling her phone out and unlocking it with a swift flick of her thumb over the screen.

**Einstein:** **Window.**

He hadn’t signed his text. Uh oh. Emily had a suspicion she was about to get the tongue lashing she’d somehow avoided with Sergio.

 

* * *

 

At her first glance, he wasn’t there. When she opened the window and leaned out, a heavy wind bit at the raw skin on her face. It smelled of storms and rain and the acrid promise of thunder, even though the sky above was pale grey with light winter clouds and the oncoming night.

A second glance found him hunkered against the far side of the fire escape, only an arm’s length away from her and impossible to miss. Yet, even as she looked at him, her eyes skated away from him and he melded into the background, becoming unimportant. Bad luck for him, because if his ability to hide himself relied on him being unimportant, then it wasn’t going to work on her anymore. She couldn’t imagine him _ever_ being unimportant to her again.

“Spencer,” she said, sliding her ass onto the windowsill and leaning out to face him. “I can see you. Is this wind yours?” She tried to keep her tone light, but when he very abruptly became solid to her again his expression was anything but. She went cold with mixed fear and surprise. She’d never seen him like this. Not even when she’d sat up in Foyet’s backyard and found him standing where Sergio had been when she’d fallen; his skin crackling with suppressed power and hand blazing with his creds around the white-knuckled grip he had on his weapon.

She doubted anyone had seen this.

He stared at her from eyes that were almost entirely hazel; the pupils tiny pinpoints of black. His mouth, usually so expressive, was a firm line and almost white with the tension in his face. He didn’t look angry; if he had, she would have already bolted back into the safety of her home because, although she trusted him, some trust wasn’t enough to dispel old scars.

He looked scared. Terrified.

“You could have died today,” he pointed out with a voice that was as far from calm as he could get it without shouting. “Foyet… he could have killed you today. I thought he had. When I heard your cat, heard him screaming like that, I thought you were dead. Do you have any idea what that was like?”

“I have a vague notion,” she replied, swallowing hard. She slipped a leg out the window, standing up on the rickety grid work and taking a tiny step towards him. The platform was small enough that this was enough to bring her chest to chest with him. “But I’m not dead—I’m right here. Alive and okay. And very capable of protecting myself, despite what my stupid cat thinks.”

The scared expression vanished and was replaced by bemusement. “What? I know. This isn’t about… I’m not having some macho complex about protecting you. I’m not Morgan, I know you’re capable, Emily. That doesn’t… today was the closest I have ever been to losing control, and it was because I was terrified I was about to lose you. Don’t you realize how bizarre that is?”

She bit at her lip, not entirely sure what he was alluding to. Or, being entirely sure and yet unwilling to make the final leap to saying it out loud in case she was wrong.  “We’re a team. That’s what we do for each other. I would do the same for JJ or Morgan. So would you.”

He grinned, except it wasn’t so much of a grin as it was a baring of teeth. Something dull thudded into her ribcage at the suggestion of sharply pointed canines in his mouth, the merest hint of his inhumanity. Just in case she’d forgotten.

“I’m not so sure anymore,” he said, and tilted his head to examine her with his mouth slightly parted, as though halfway through a thought he’d forgotten before it could reach his lips. “Because when I thought you were dead, I wanted to kill him. And I don’t generally entertain homicidal thoughts, as a rule. So why would I desire that when I don’t believe I would do the same for Hotch or Morgan? I’ve only known you a month, and you don’t even trust me to let me into your home. I’ve known them for years, and they both have spare keys to my apartment.”

She tried to answer, but he’d closed the gap between them and now the thudding in her chest was a sharp gallop as her pulse and heartbeat raced at his proximity. She sucked in a shocked breath, finding herself inches from him, with his scent surrounding her, and the wind had died down to the stifling kind of humidity that preceded a storm. It was different, intoxicating, and she couldn’t breathe properly with the air so thick, or maybe it was the way her chest was constricting around her lungs.

He was really quite tall. She tilted back slightly to look into his eyes, ignoring the way her head spun at the movement, her bruises protesting.

_Really_ tall.

His eyes had narrowed and they were slowly tracing the bruises, as though memorising each and every one of them. It was a milder version of Gideon or Hotch’s intent gazes, and it made her feel like a frog pinned back, ready to be dissected by a curious student.

“I wouldn’t say no to a spare key,” she ended up saying weakly, trying to smile but failing as it tugged at swollen skin and slipped away. “In case you fall in the shower and I have to swoop in and rescue you.”

There was a flicker of movement that drew her attention to his mouth as he ran his tongue over the bottom lip. Her own mouth went dry as her stomach promptly decided to bail out of her shoes, dropping and taking all the heat in her body with it. Almost all the heat. Suddenly, the memory of the hotel was loud and forward in her brain, impossible to ignore.

“You’re a puzzle, Emily Prentiss,” he said quietly, his voice dangerously husky. “One I can’t solve without more data. I don’t believe I’m reading your body language incorrectly, so…”

His mouth met hers and the electric jolt of raw desire that shot through her body almost sent her reeling back into the window. His hand on her hip, the other on her arm, pulling her close and then wrapping around her and pressing his own body against her. He kissed like he profiled; confident and precise with every detail, starting with the widest margin for error and then narrowing it down. It was heady and nothing like before because this was the sort of kissing you did when you’d spent time imagining never having the chance.

Then he pulled away and left her cold, alone, and wildly aroused.

There were three spots of raw heat on her body. One between her legs, and one look at the hungry expression on Reid’s face told her that he was _very_ aware of that one. Two on her shoulder. And those were the ones that snapped her back to herself, throwing a bucket of ice water over her and bringing everything back into vivid clarity. The runes hadn’t responded the first time on the fire escape, they hadn’t even hummed at the hotel, and the fact that they were responding now boded ill for his mental state.

_“You can’t deny that a lot of the arts practised within it have elements of compulsion,”_ murmured the ghost of Hotch in her ear, except this time it was a warning instead of a statement. She wondered if Reid even knew what he was doing.

“What are you?” she asked again, and this time it wasn’t with careful curiosity but a _need_ to know because they’d just flown past the point of it not mattering anymore. In fact, she was pretty sure they’d flown far enough past it that if she looked down, the point wouldn’t even be in sight anymore. His face flushed, but the dark, hungry look in his eyes didn’t vanish. He looked like a man who’d been starving and who’d been offered a bite of something delicious, only to have it taken away.

He cocked his head and smiled without humour. “Besides halfway to being in love with you?”

Shit.

He didn’t know he was doing it, she realized that now, but now that she knew she could counter it. And, before she found out, before he answered her hasty question, she needed to do something.

He opened his mouth to speak again, and she knew he was going to tell her. She stopped him, shaking her head. “Don’t. I… don’t need to know right now.”

“Why not?”

Here it was. Emily Prentiss, jumping into the deep end again. Sergio was going to be _furious_. “Because I want you to know that I trust you.”

His eyes widened and, just like that, the darkly seductive man had vanished and left behind her awkward co-worker and his ridiculous hair. She was amused to note that this had no effect on quelling the heat in her belly and below. “Oh, um, you don’t have…”

“Spencer, shut up for once in your life, and come inside. It’s fucking cold out here.”


	5. Lull

She was pretty sure that Reid was actually made up of a bunch of bird bones all strung together into the rough semblance of a person. When he stepped out of his pants and almost sprawled ungracefully onto the bed, she decided that that bird was probably an ostrich. A really skinny, permanently drunk ostrich with absolutely no sense of balance.

She sighed and slipped out of her shirt, dropping it on the floor in a pool of fabric next to her pants. He reached down to scoop his clothes up, folding them neatly and laying them on the dresser before turning to face her.

“Do you actually eat anything other than coffee and candy?” she asked, sitting on the bed and putting her hands on either side of his hips to draw him forward. He was still wearing his socks, one green and one blue with polka dots. She didn’t mind. She still had her underwear and bra on, delighting in the slow reveal.

“Sure,” he said with a shrug. She traced her hands over his hips, along the delicate skin stretched over those bird-bones, running them up his sides to rest on his ribs. Then she dropped them, because he’d sucked in a shivering breath at her light touch, and his underwear had shifted very slightly as his stomach concaved to reveal the last thing she’d expected.

“Oh man,” she said, hooking a thumb through the elastic waistband and drawing it down low enough to reveal the barest hint of dark curls and the dark filigree of runes tattooed into his left hip and down his thigh. “Morgan is never going to believe that you have ink, you realize this, right? Hell, I don’t think even think I believe it. Is this fake?” She scrubbed a thumb over his skin, smiling as he twitched at her touch. He was like a skittish horse she was trying to gain the trust of.

“No,” he said quietly, his voice serious enough that she drew back and peered up to see his face. “I… I’ve always had it.”

“Always?” She tried to pull him closer but he resisted slightly, settling his bony hands onto her shoulders and twisting clumsily in her grip. “Pretty sure you aren’t born with tattoos, Spence. Especially not runes, even ones that are purely decorative. What does it say?”

“Not born, no. But…”

Oh. She examined it closer, the way the spell-ink had shifted and stretched over the years along with a growing body. Despite the horrifying image of an infant Spencer under the needle that was haunting her, it _was_ beautiful. “How young were you?”

“Young enough that I wasn’t given a choice. It’s permanent. No spell will remove it, no glamour will cover it. I’ve tried.”

She didn’t have to be a profiler to see the discomfit talking about it gave him. “It’s okay,” she soothed, pulling him down into her arms, and this time he came willingly. “It’s fine, Spence.” He kneeled between her legs, breathing quickly against her chest as he leaned against her, doing nothing but pressing his lips to her collarbone. She curled her arms around him, feeling the odd push-give sensation of the glamour he wore tugging at the hands she settled on his back. She traced her fingers over his spine, slowly, counting the vertebrae she could reach with her fingertips, losing count of how long they sat like that, eyes closed, just waiting for time to begin again. He broke the spell, reaching out and tracing a finger down her thigh and finding the pock-mark of an old scar on her knee. Cool fingers left a trail of goosebumps behind them, even over the thickened skin of the scar.

“Fell off my bike,” she said with a smile. She hoped he wouldn’t shift that regard to the scars on her chest, on her stomach. He eyed them and said nothing. She breathed again with relief.

He shrugged one of her arms off his shoulder, taking her hand and holding it to his own stomach. A slight ridge marred the skin there. “Appendix,” he admitted with a crooked grin, some of the life that had vanished at the sight of the tattoo reappearing. “Can you… can I see your work?”

Her heart almost lodged itself in her throat at the awed tone to his voice, as though he was asking something he couldn’t imagine ever being given permission to view. She nodded, watching as his eyes widened with delight and curiosity, tugging him by the hand onto the bed. She lay flat, him propped up on his arm next to her. Three quick patterns on her palm, and she brought the runes on her body to life in a sweeping motion. He hummed and scanned her body hungrily, the varying skills and patterns a testament to the craft she’d spent her life working on learning. She could remove the childish first attempts or the broken runes that had no purpose but reminders of her mistakes, but she liked the stories they told.

By the look on his face, he did too.

Long fingers danced on her wrist, tracing the familiar mark. “Sergio,” he read quietly. “‘No one learns except by friendship.’ Have you ever thought about why they mark the mage and not the familiar?”

“Because the mage is considered the lesser of the pairing,” she answered him, the old beliefs woven through their traditions. “Magic and knowledge combine to create the corruption of power. Their familiar grounds them, reminds them of their weaknesses and their duties. The tattoo is a reminder of that.”

“It’s a promise,” Reid said, bringing her wrist to his mouth and brushing his lips against it softly. He lowered it, laying his fingers against the runes he recognised and naming them. The dip of her neck: “Warning of toxins.” He paused at her shoulder, the runes that had burned when he kissed her earlier: “A warning of compulsion. And protection against.” As he named them, he ran his lips over them, stretching out beside her in a lazy sprawl. Just below her bellybutton, dipping into the line of her underwear. She couldn’t decipher the expression on his face: “Protection against pregnancy. This one isn’t yours.”

“Some of them aren’t. I’m a defensive rune-mage, not a healer. Most of the bodily ones aren’t.”

His fingers traced the one around her bicep. “Warning of demons… _Emily!_?”

He’d seen it. His fingers paused. She actually felt his heart skip against her arm. _Tha-thump._ She would have smiled, except the shocked expression on his face was making it hard to think. “I got sick of it reacting every time you came near me,” she explained quietly, as he ran the pad of his index finger over the essence of his name woven through it. “So, I fixed it.” He didn’t answer, just stared at it avidly. Then he shifted, laying flush against her and pressing his mouth to her arm, just above the rune. He mumbled something against the skin, something she couldn’t catch. “What?” she asked, frowning.

He shook his head. “Nothing,” he murmured, closing his eyes. “Just it’s… perfect. It’s perfect.”

 

* * *

 

She wasn’t sure how long they lay like that but, eventually, his hands began roaming her skin, exploring her. She shivered under his touch. It wasn’t sexual, more curious than anything, and he was still soft against her hip. It was still, somehow, the most intimate experience of her life.

There was a slow kind of burn with this kind of stroking. It built carefully, layered in his hands and his lips and his voice and, while she wouldn’t call it arousal, it was certainly impossible to ignore. It made her breath catch and her stomach jolt pleasantly, and she found herself curving into his touch like a cat being petted. It slowly built in her belly and her groin and eventually ignited into a slow heat that she knew he was aware of by the shift in his breathing. That was when it changed, sped up, and he moved to her mouth to claim it with his own. Leisurely, careful kisses that lingered just long enough for her to feel like she was drowning in them, gasping for air.

He slid a hand around her back, and she arched so he could snap open the fastening on her bra and slide it off her. He did it one-handed in a single smooth motion, and she almost rolled her eyes at the ease. _You’ve practised that, boyo,_ she thought fleetingly. _Whore_. The thought was affectionate.

The way he examined her bared breasts was as reverent as the way he’d examined her runes or her legs, and she felt laid opened, exposed somehow, but not in a way she minded. He found her mouth again, deepening the kisses, and now he was hard against her hip as she rubbed against him, needing skin against skin, responding with a soft moan of his own.

“Beautiful,” he said quietly, pressing his cheek against her face for a moment, his eyelashes catching her skin in a soft flicker of air. It was the slowest she’d ever been undressed, undone, and she was as helpless as a day-old kitten under him.

“You still have your socks on,” she pointed out, her voice far shakier than she was happy with, and he smirked.

“You still have these on,” he countered, sliding his hand between her legs to cup her groin and running his thumb against the slickness that had seeped through her underwear, and that wasn’t slow at all. She rocked into that hand, a sharp gasp cut off midway as he took the chance to tug her underwear to the side, not even off, and dip his long fingers into her. “Look at you.” His eyes widened as though surprised. “Christ, Emily, you’re…” He paused and flushed red and it was ridiculous, all things considered.

“Don’t you go shy on me,” she hissed, feeling his fingers teasing, exploring and, finally, _inyesjustlikethat_. Her toes clenched against the blanket, feeling him curl those clever fingers and move them just right, pressing the heel of his palm right where she could rock against it to find the friction she was craving. “Fuuck, Spencer. You don’t get to go shy when you’re doing this.”

He watched her with eyes as black as sin, and she wondered for a second if he was memorising her, her runes and her imperfections and her ink, adding him to that perfect recall he was capable of. She wondered if he’d hold this moment forever, treasure it. She wished she could. She knew once it was over it would be a flawed memory for her, time twisting it and her own brain working against her to blur the details.

“I’m what?” she managed to grit out eventually through clenched teeth, and she didn’t break eye contact with him as she said it. A challenge. If he wanted to fuck her, he’d better get used to that.

He didn’t look away either, the words falling out of his mouth as though he was unused to them, almost frightened of them. Still blushing, whispering like it was a secret: “You’re wet.”

Even when she could feel how fucking aroused he was against her leg and knew how scared he was by his voice, he had such a way of speaking, of enunciating every word, that she wriggled in his grip anyway. Goddamnit, his fear of the words shouldn’t be so damn attractive, but she could feel herself clench, pulling tight around his fingers; he could feel it too because he whined deep in his throat twitching against her leg, a firm heat even through the thin fabric.

“Okay, okay, enough. We… you… need to do something. Anything.” She was almost begging. “Wait, wait…” She thought of the pregnancy rune, one problem down, but he was still a man with everything that came with it, and she didn’t really know anything about him.

“I’m clean,” he mumbled, flushing again. “I can, um… guarantee it. But if it would make you more comfortable…” He glanced around her room like the foil packet he was searching for was going to throw itself at him.

“It’s fine,” she said. “I trust you.” Because she realized suddenly that she absolutely did, and Emily didn’t trust often. She wasn’t sure if the realization was terrifying or exhilarating. She had a sudden very vivid memory of the hotel, the illusory feel of him moving inside her, and had to hold her breath and stay very still for a moment while the memory sent electric shockwaves straight to where his fingers were still working, breaking her apart and not letting her have any respite. “Spencer, oh god, please.”

“What? Use your words, Em.” He was teasing, trying for a mock-fierce tone, but his voice was breathless and his eyes had turned desperate. He wanted this just as much as she did.

“Fuck your words,” she snapped, and pulled away from him, for a second worried she’d been too harsh, but he laughed shakily and it sounded like she felt. Strung tight and edged with everything they weren’t saying. She shucked her underwear while still laying awkwardly against him, feeling him do the same, their movements suddenly rough and fumbling. He kept the socks on; no one could look attractive with just socks, except he, somehow, did.

She grabbed him, dragged him close into a bruising kiss, and his hand landed on her side, sticky with her need for him and hot with his own body heat. She could feel him trapped between them, a hard length against her belly. “Drop the glamour,” she said suddenly, recklessly, feeling him shudder and soften slightly in his shock, thrown off kilter. “Please. Spencer, please. I want to see you when you fuck me—the real you.”

And, like that, he was hard again, his mouth parted and eyes dark with desire and terror. She could see his brain misfiring, struggling to come up with a reason why not, or possibly a reason why.

He gave in. He rocked against her once, twice, and she actually felt the glamour leave his skin.

Wings that weren’t tightly furled but arched away from his spine, delicate and almost a perfect cross between a bat’s and a bird’s. They didn’t look strong enough to carry him, strong enough to carry any human, even as the light caught them and turned them almost translucent.

_Bird bones_ , she thought again, but then he looked at her and she was fucking lost.

Without the glamour, he wasn’t human, not at all, not really, and it wasn’t the wings or the delicate suggestion of pointed canines, or the way his eyes dragged at her and promised her oblivion. It was everything combined, and she unravelled.

“Oh fuck,” she gasped and her shoulder burned. “Spencer, Spencer, _Spencer_.” She didn’t know if he knew he was compelling her—didn’t think he did either—but she was a heartbeat away from it not mattering because she wanted _needed_ him in a way she wasn’t entirely sure was only the compulsion of those eyes, feeling herself pushing against him, shifting, the hard press of him at the entrance to her. _Wantwantwant._

“Shit,” he moaned, turning his head and those eyes away and the burning need receded slightly. “Sorry, sorry.”

She shook her head, clearing her mind from the trailing, silky touch of his loss of control. “It’s okay, I blocked most of it,” she soothed him quickly. A lie, almost. If he hadn’t pulled back she’d be on him already. Not entirely the inadvertent spell’s fault. “But I swear, if you don’t get your cock inside me right the fuck now, I’ll spell you until you can’t think of anything other than my name.”

A flurry of movement and he pressed at her, pausing, eyes firmly faced away. She reached out and tilted his gaze back to her in that split moment. Met those eyes again. Her shoulder hummed and then settled into a slow warmth that coiled through her. Manageable this time, now she knew it was coming. He rocked into her slowly and, then, as they adjusted, quicker. She froze at the feeling because it was nothing like they’d imagined and yet everything more. His rhythm was off, he slipped slightly and slid out on his first thrust, but she didn’t care because when he pushed back in she rolled her hips up to take him fully and _fuck_ she was undone.

Her spine tingled and fizzed with sensation dancing across her skin, travelling rapidly to a fixed point in her centre where she could feel him moving in her, hands everywhere and gripping, nails scratching. This wasn’t going to last, not with the slow, almost painful, build-up, and she could tell from the stuttering way his hips kept pausing that he wasn’t going to last either. She reached up to his head, ran her hand over his cheek and jaw and threaded fingers through his wild hair.

Her thumb brushed over the suggestion of a ridge under the side of his fringe, almost a horn, and she raised an eyebrow at him. He tried to look sheepish, but the effect was sorely ruined by the wrecked expression on his face as he hurtled inexorably to the end. His mouth was moving faintly, and she strained to hear what he was saying, smirking when she realized he was counting, calculating; rambling numbers with a rattled voice in a desperate bid to hold himself together.

She refused to go first. She didn’t have to reach for his mind, it was right there and open to her, and she slipped in and coiled around his thoughts, barely even pausing to separate her emotions from her voice. Let him feel them. He’d already bared himself to her on this night.

_“Come for me, Spencer,”_ she whispered into his mind, and his mouth gaped open in shock. Then, he retaliated, right as she felt the warm pulse of him inside her, gathering his thoughts and feelings up in a messy ball of _himness_ and lobbing them back at her.

And she was drowning in them, the knowledge of what she felt like to him and her skin under his fingers; her eyes that were all he could focus on and the careful calculations of the time between her heartbeats, how many heartbeats she had left in their lifetime, focusing on her body in every possible way.

And, under it all, under the hot desire that drowned him and the pulsing need of his own orgasm, was the most terrifying feeling of all.

He opened his eyes and looked at her and although he masked it well, she could feel the dizzying exhilaration of love and desperate, crushing affection that had brought him to his knees. She by Hotch’s office watching him with a cool regard the first time they’d met and his curiosity; on the fire escape and being too scared to move in case he woke her in his arms; the gut-wrenching horror of seeing her on the ground, seeing herself on the ground, Sergio’s screams, and blood around her, on her, _nonono not her, please not Emily._

And running around his head, a rat trapped in a maze, a single word: _cambion._

“Oh, fuck,” she gasped against the knowledge of that dangerous love, and shattered around him.

 

* * *

 

Sex didn’t change things between them. He was still irrepressibly awkward, she was still coolly reserved. Sometimes she thought it was odd that Reid’s singular admittance that he was falling in love with her was the only moment either of them had brought their hearts into what they were doing. That, and the moment in bed when he’d opened his heart to her scrutiny. They talked about neither. They also didn’t tell anyone. Emily wasn’t so sure of her place on the team that she was willing to risk Hotch’s wrath at compromising their professionalism, and she wasn’t so sure of her place in their hearts that she’d risk JJ or Morgan knowing about her compromising Spencer’s bed. Well, her own bed. She never went to him. He never asked her to.

And they didn’t speak again about the rune on his hip or the quiet word he’d thought to her that night. Sometimes she hovered her hands over her keyboard with the cursor blinking in the search bar and considered typing it in. All the answers she needed, seven letters and a mouse click away.

She never did.

Some nights he’d come to her with movies and take-away boxes that filled her apartment with delicious scents that almost covered his own. Sometimes they’d watch the movies and fall asleep on the living room floor, tangled in blankets and unspoken questions. Some nights her phone would buzz and it would be him and the only thing on there would be a simple, _‘Hungry?’_ and she’d know he wasn’t talking about food.

Life settled into an easy ritual of work and him, and trying to coax her increasingly angry familiar out of his room and into the apartment that she guiltily admitted smelled more like demon than it did mage at that point, especially to a cat. But she promised herself she’d make it up to him. And he’d adjust to Reid, eventually. Given time.

After a month of this, she woke up one morning, rolled over, and realization hit her like a semi-trailer. She was pretty sure she was falling in love with him.

And after Doyle, she could never tell him that.

 

* * *

 

She waited until he was asleep before slipping out of the bed and padding naked around the apartment restlessly. It was cool enough that the air nipped at her arms and the hushed silence surrounding her felt suffocating.  She wasn’t sure what was bothering her, only that something was.

She paced back into the room and peered through the door at the long, even lines of his bare back and torso, and it occurred to her that, even though she’d seen everything of him before, he still kept himself hidden from her. The delicately powerful wings he’d shyly shown her that night stayed firmly glamoured, the slight points to his ears covered by the wild waves of his hair. She closed her eyes and let her forehead rest against the wood of the doorframe, listening to the soft huff of his breathing against the sheets.

Something tickled at her conscious again and she frowned, moving quietly back up the hallway and glancing into the darkened rooms as she passed. There was something she was missing. Everything seemed normal, nothing was shifted around or out of place; there was a layer of dust from the neglect her belongings suffered when she was on call more often than she wasn’t. She couldn’t work out what was clawing at her mind like a cat at a door, begging for attention.

A curtain flickered, shifted. She stopped and stared at it, at the breeze that whispered through the open window.

She never left windows open.

“What are you doing?” His voice was husky with sleep, watching her from the bedroom door with creases on his skin from where he’d mashed his face into the pillow. “What’s wrong?”

“Did you open a window?” Her palm blazed, filling the room with uneven light as she examined the open space.

“Yeah, before. I closed it though, I’m sure.” He blinked and rubbed at his eye with the back of one hand. “At least, I think I did.”

A smile flickered at the corner of her mouth. “Mr. Eidetic-Memory himself, can’t remember if you closed a window.”

“I have perfect recall of the written word, not every moment of every day.” For all the teasing tone to his voice, his eyes were narrowed.

She strode over and pushed the window shut, laying her hand flat against it. The security runes flickered, sparking green. “No one’s been through,” she said with a shrug. “You must have forgotten to close it. It’s no biggie.”

“Security runes can be circumvented,” he murmured, and ghosted away. She could hear doors opening quietly, the sound of his feet on the carpet. Checking every room. She moved as well, the old ritual taking her back to days when life had been a little deadlier. Checking the runes on the walls for the green shimmer under her palm that meant they were untouched. Checking the doors. Checking the other windows. Checking her weapons: service weapon in the gun-safe; non-service weapon by the front door, loaded and hidden by a glamour; a curse by the bookshelf that only she could trigger; a heavy-hilted knife sharp enough to cut air in her bedside cupboard, shielded by the thickest runes she knew. She lifted that out, hefted it in one palm. It was old. And deadly. She’d used it to great effect before.

Their work made them paranoid.

There was a sudden throbbing growl and a yelp. Reid appeared in the doorway, looking sheepish and shaking his hand. Three red stripes across the top stood out vividly against his pale skin. Opening his mouth, he paused with his eyes on the knife. He knew it immediately. “Why do you have that?” He took an uncertain step back, every part of him rebelling against allowing it near him. “How do you have that? I didn’t think there were any left.”

Her breath caught in her throat, and she quickly slid it back into the drawer, closing it firmly. “Old family heirloom. And there’s not… not since demon hunting fell out of favour.” She smiled as she said it, letting him know it wasn’t there because of him. He’d relaxed as soon as the iron-bound knife had disappeared behind the shielding runes.

“Lucky for some of us,” he muttered, covering the scratches on his hand with his mouth. She pulled a disgusted face at him. “Um. Found Sergio’s room.”

Laughing, she moved across to look at the ‘war wounds’. “He’s not in there. He hasn’t come home for a few nights now, he’s off wandering. That spell is set to trigger if anyone touches the doorknob.” She ran her hand over the rapidly vanishing scratches. They weren’t real, just the idea of scratches. They’d disappear quickly enough.

Reid caught her hand and turned it over, running his thumb gently over her familiar mark. “Don’t you miss him when he’s gone like this?”

“Not really. He always comes back, and I know he’s fine. He’s probably off making lots of baby Sergios. I’d rather not know.”

Reid kept his gaze steady, studying her. She avoided that look by pulling him close, skin to skin, and just holding him. The night shifted around them, casting long shadows on her walls. “I’m sorry he’s avoiding you,” Reid murmured eventually as she traced her fingers over the outline of his ribs. “It’s my fault. This is his home, and I make him feel unwelcome.”

“It’s my home too, and I want you here. Come back to bed.” She wriggled her hips against his, reminding him of their state of undress. “If you need me to prove that.”

_I’ll get Sergio to sniff around_ , she thought briefly. _He’ll know if the spells were compromised._

And then she didn’t think of much more at all, except him.

 

* * *

 

“Someone is setting me up.” Derek was furious. Emily could practically see his hackles rising, even through the glass of the mirror into the interrogation room.

“He didn’t do this,” Emily muttered under her breath, digging her hands into her pockets so no one could see them shaking. _Composure, composure. Keep your composure, Prentiss._

“Your profile says he did,” said Detective Gordinski, his voice cold. Emily _hated_ him in that split second. She didn’t let that show on her face. “Are you saying your profile is wrong? ‘Cos, I got told your man is the best. You don’t know what Derek Morgan is capable of.”

“Profiles are much more useful for the exclusion of suspects rather than the inclusion,” Reid piped in, hovering near the door with his fingers dancing anxiously on the side of his hip. “Really, using that profile you could twist it to fit any one of us in this room if you were so inclined. Morgan isn’t capable of this kind of violence, it doesn’t fit his personality at all.”

Gordinski turned his head slowly and narrowed his eyes. Emily didn’t like the look on his face and, by the sharp glance Gideon aimed at him, neither did he. “And the character reference of a demon is supposed to convince me of that, is it?” he snapped. “The fact that he counts a darkling like you as his friend is a strike against him in my books.”

Reid’s expression didn’t even flicker. Emily wondered how many times he’d had that accusation throw at him before. “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts,” he quoted quietly.

“Well, to me it seems like I have all the facts, and you have one guilty sonofabitch with a lot to hide. When you stop trying to pretend it’s not happening, you know where I’ll be. Doing my job. Maybe you should join me.” Gordinski strode out, the backs of his ears glowing red.

“Don’t worry, we know he’s innocent,” Gideon said firmly in the lull that followed Gordinski’s departure. “And we’ll prove it once Morgan starts cooperating.”

A bang startled them, Morgan slamming his hand on the table between him and Hotch. Hotch didn’t even flinch, even as Emily and Reid both jumped.

“Come on, Hotch! Someone was in my house recently, and I bet I know who it was. Harris, Rodney Harris! He’s a gangbanger, elf-kind. He’s been messing with me since we were kids.”

“Why would Harris travel all the way to DC to break into your home and take nothing, Morgan?”

“I don’t know! I got home, the place reeked of an intruder, and Clooney was locked in the basement. Someone knew me well enough to get in and take nothing. Why would they do that if not to set me up?”

Reid twitched. “Wait, did he say someone was in his house? Emily, did you...?”

“I never asked Sergio,” she said, her mouth going dry. “I never checked. I just assumed it was… There was a window open in my apartment a few nights ago. I thought he… I thought I closed it. I’m never that careless.”

JJ made a soft noise from the corner of the room where she’d been quietly going through the box of ‘evidence’ against Morgan that Gordinski had compiled. She spoke, her eyes never leaving Emily. “There was someone in my yard the other night. I didn’t see, I wasn’t there, but they triggered my security spells. I didn’t think much of it.”

They looked at Gideon who shook his head slowly. “It seems unlikely they’re not related. If someone has been attempting—or in Prentiss’s case, gaining—access to our homes, it’s far too much of a coincidence that Morgan is arrested barely a week later. Reid, is your home secure?”

Reid’s eyes flickered, almost darting to Emily before flashing back to Gideon. She sighed inwardly. If Gideon hadn’t heard her slip up, he would have certainly seen Reid’s. “I think so. I, um, haven’t noticed anything odd. But if it _is_ the same intruder, that might not be surprising. JJ, your security spellwork stopped him?”

“Eventually. He got through the yard—I think he stole a wind chime.” Her face twisted, oddly emotive. “It… it was my sister’s. Butterflies. She knew I liked them.”

Emily hadn’t even known that JJ had a sister.

Reid turned to her now. “And, so far as we know, your spells didn’t even pick him up. So we know that he’s weaker than JJ’s spellwork but far stronger than yours. Mine is just above hers, Gideon’s is higher than all of us.”

Wow, helpful. “Reid, are you serious? That’s a big difference. She’s elvish. Her magic makes eight of me. You could fit half of DC into that gap.”

He nodded, hair flopping into his eyes with his enthusiasm. “Yeah, but…” He stopped and paled. “Wait, Hotch—Jack and Haley! We need to tell him.” He darted out the door, JJ following close behind, the box abandoned.

Gideon was staring at her. “Prentiss.” She faced him reluctantly, almost tasting the disapproval. “He lied just then.”

That wasn’t what she’d expected. “Excuse me, sir? I don’t… understand?”

He moved towards her, close enough that the hair on the back of her neck stood on end with the tension of his proximity. He wasn’t a comfortable man to get near, all prickles and piercing eyes, and she wanted to back away. “Reid. Just then. He lied, and you didn’t even pick up on that. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

And just like that, the tension eased as he stepped away smoothly towards the door. “I just want you to be aware, Reid’s magic in terms of raw power far surpasses my own. You should consider why he would keep that hidden from you, and maybe reconsider the path you’re treading. For both your sakes.” Then, he was gone and she could breathe again, vaguely aware of the rumble of voices behind her in the other room.

Somehow, despite the feeling that that wasn’t going to be the full extent of their disciplinary action, it was an odd release to have someone else know.

 

* * *

 

Derek ran. Emily had never heard Gideon swear before, but he did then. Then, he turned to Reid and her heart stopped, because Reid looked resigned.

“If we don’t find him before Gordinski does, this is going to end badly,” Gideon said quietly, quietly enough that Emily could practically hear Reid swallowing nervously. Hotch was still, watching them both. “If he’s shifted, he’s likely on four legs. We won’t catch him in time, Reid. You can. You have to talk him down from whatever he’s going to do.”

“Ok.” Reid’s voice was a whisper. His next words were silent, but Emily heard them. _“Guess this has been four years coming.”_

_“Spence…”_ she sent back, but he’d already dropped the glamour.

JJ’s sharp gasp next to her cemented Emily’s suspicion that Reid had _never_ actually let any of them see him un-glamoured before. Hotch’s expression stayed calm, but his eyes widened ever so slightly, almost a shout of surprise for him. Wings spread, the air thickened with the smell of ozone, and Reid vanished in a flurry of wing-claps. Emily blinked frantically to clear her eyes from the bizarre sensation of having seen the air twisting around him as he’d taken off, seeing JJ doing the same.

“Can he find him?” JJ asked, following Hotch as they moved quickly to the exit. Hotch would be able to lead them straight to him, following the trace in his palm, but Reid had the best chance of beating the cops that also ran on four legs. Emily really didn’t fancy seeing if a pack of Garou, convinced that Morgan was a child-killer, would simply detain him rather than taking things into their own jaws.

“He’d better,” Hotch replied grimly.

Emily slid into the backseat of the SUV with JJ next to her. “Did you know he had wings?” JJ asked her, her blue eyes suspicious. “You didn’t look surprised. I mean, he kept them hidden for four years. That’s… an impressive effort to hide something that none of us would judge him for.”

“I knew,” Emily replied, because she knew she couldn’t get away with lying. JJ’s face flickered through a quick range of emotions; shock, hurt, betrayal and, finally, shuttered blankness. She looked away. Gideon’s eyes watched her in the rear-view mirror, and Emily saw the secrets she and Reid had been living behind begin to crash down around them.

 

* * *

 

Back home and he came straight to her, slipping in through the kitchen window like a ghost. She turned to frown at him, drying her hands with a tea towel and still seething with frustration over misplacing the book she’d been reading, the one he’d bought her. Their first gift. “You know, I have a front door. It opens and everything.”

“I’m sick of secrets,” he blurted out, straightening and… _oh_ , she thought, watching as his wings flexed and closed loosely against his back. “Hiding us, hiding these. Morgan almost went to _prison_ because of hiding his past. Why do we hide everything from each other when it doesn’t actually help anyone in the long run?”

She cut him off, tossing the tea towel over her shoulder and moving over to him. Putting her hands on his chest, she could feel his heart hammering and the heat from the physical exertion of flying rising from him. “Hey, hey, calm down. What happened to Morgan… that’s the kind of thing that hurts to relive, Spence. You know that. We all have stuff like that, every last one of us. I don’t want to know yours if you’re not ready to tell it.” She slid her hand onto his hip, untucking his ruffled shirt and splaying her fingers over the delicate lines of the rune on the skin there. She could almost feel his pulse through the tips of her fingers, the slightest hint of rough hair under them. He blinked, looking down at her hand.

“Half,” he said finally. She froze.

“What?”

“The rune. It means half. Or half-breed, if you want to be crass. That’s what I am. I’m half of what I could be. Human mother. Demonic father. I’m neither. And both.”

Her fingers tightened almost imperceptibly on his hip. “Cambion,” she breathed. “That’s the word you said. That’s what you are.”

He leaned into her and rested his mouth near her ear. The murmured words were difficult for her to translate, especially with the speed at which he spoke them. Fast and smooth; as easily as though they didn’t cost him everything: _“Enfans des Demons. Delancre et Bodin pensent que les demons incubes peuvent s'unir aux demones succubes, et qu'il nait de leur commerce des enfans hideux qu'on nomme cambions.”_

It took her a beat longer than it should have, but the words eventually clicked into place. He was silent, waiting for her judgement. Waiting for her to shun him.

“No one could look at you and call you hideous,” she whispered, pulling his mouth down to hers and kissing him like her heart was breaking. “I don’t care. I’ve never cared. This changes nothing.” Maybe her heart was breaking, but not because she saw them ending.

It was breaking because she saw in him the child he had been and still was, and what she now knew they had labelled him as without sparing a thought for who he was beyond that label.

_“Child of Demons. Delancre and Bodin think that incubus demons could unite with succubus demons, and that born of their exchange were hideous children which are called cambions.”_

“This changes nothing,” she repeated, because it needed to be said again just in case he’d decided to be stubborn about it.

 

* * *

 

He went home that night, leaving her alone to contemplate the fact that she was pretty sure she was dating an incubus.

_“This is going to go over well with Elizabeth,”_ said a voice suddenly, Sergio appearing on top of the fridge. _“Oh hi, Mother. Here’s my sex demon boyfriend. Don’t worry, Sergio approves.”_

“Goddamnit, you stupid cat,” she said, jumping out of her seat to drag him down into her arms. He grumbled as she grabbed him, his fur damp and salty smelling. She hugged him anyway, allowing herself a moment of sentiment since tonight seemed to be the night for it. “I thought you’d forgotten where you lived, it’s been weeks… wait, what?”

_“Did I stutter?”_ he grumbled, trying to wiggle around in her arms so he could lick his fur flat. _“I said, ‘Oh hi, Mother. Here’s_ — _’”_

“You approve of Reid?” She held up out by his arms, ignoring his growl of protest as he dangled ungracefully in the air. “You _hate_ Reid. You think he’s just waiting until I’m asleep to murder the both of us.”

_“That was before I knew he was an incubus. I mean, I figured he must have some sort of appeal if you’re being so stubborn about him, but if nothing else, at least he’d be a sensational lay.”_

“Sergio.” She shook him slightly to emphasize her point.

_“Good god, witch. Don’t you read? I hated him because you constantly seem to invite danger into your bed. Doyle and now him, I was under the impression you were merely continuing your quest for self-destruction. Clearly that is not the case. Incubi powers aren’t just based around sex, you know.”_ He seemed distracted, nostrils flaring and mouth open, tasting the air around them. _“They’re bound by their hearts. So long as he cares for you, he can no more hurt you than he could overpower Gideon.”_

“Gideon says Reid’s stronger than him.” She couldn’t touch on the rest of his statement without it feeling like her chest was constricting. Bound by their hearts wasn’t exactly the most overwhelming vote of confidence ever.

_“Stronger perhaps, but raw power very rarely translates to talent. Something is wrong. Someone has been here.”_

He dropped to the ground, ghosting easily through her arms and stalking around the kitchen with his tail lashing.

“We had a break-in last week. JJ and Morgan had visits as well. Gideon upped the spellwork on all our homes earlier today when we got back from Chicago, no one is getting in now, Serge. We’re waiting on the forensic magi to see if JJ’s security spellwork picked up any trace of them.”

_“Sooner than a week ago. Someone has been here today, perhaps before. Is anything missing?”_

She shook her head, her questions about Reid fizzling away and leaving her with a humming hyper-vigilance that set her nerves alight. She went for her gun as Sergio bounded through the apartment, runes on the walls flickering to follow him as he called to them.

_“Emily. I know this scent_ — _you need to call Hotch.”_

“And tell him what?”

_“Foyet has been in our home.”_

* * *

 

Hotch was white-lipped and _furious_. “I don’t want anyone going anywhere alone,” he said, staring them all down one by one as they all nodded assent. “If you are outside this building, you are in pairs or more. You’ll also all have protection details.”

That didn’t go over so well.

“Hotch, man, I don’t want people sitting outside my home when we don’t even know if he’s coming back!”

“They won’t be able to follow me in the air, and I’m much, much safer travelling by flight. Foyet can’t fly—and, statistically, it’s far safer than travelling by car.”

“I _live_ in the Bureau, sir! I’m the last person he’s going to get to—I’m probably safer than all of you. Ohmygosh, I don’t like that. I don’t like any of this. Why can’t you all just stay with me?”

Emily snorted, and the chorus of voices stopped as everyone looked at her. “What, and sleep in the walls, Garcia? I spend enough time here, I don’t need to add BAU sleepovers to that list.” Garcia flushed, her form fizzling at the edges and blurring like a badly tuned black and white TV.

Hotch was staring her down now, probably thrown by her lack of aversion to his new rules. “Prentiss, do you have a problem with having protection on you?”

She shrugged. She really didn’t. “You know who my mother is. I grew up with a protection detail. It’ll practically be nostalgic.” Unspoken was her knowledge that if she had protection on her, they would also inadvertently be protecting Reid. And he would have a far harder time escaping her eye line than he would anyone else. With his penchant for getting in trouble, she was contemplating gluing him to her hip. Sergio dug his claws into her lap, snoozing deeply. Or pretending to. She never could really tell with him.

“We can’t do this forever, Hotch,” Morgan complained, his expression dark, “and Foyet’s proven that he can wait us out. He’s messing with us, and this is proving that it’s working.”

“You know what else will prove that he’s ‘getting to us’, Morgan?” snapped Hotch with uncharacteristic harshness, “If he sees the chance to take one of you out when you’re alone without someone backing you up. That’s what he really wants. My word is final. If you have a problem with it, speak to me privately. Thank you.” The click of the conference room door shutting softly behind him might as well have been a slam for the way they all flinched.

“He’s losing it,” Morgan declared, hunching into the chair. “This is fucking insane. We don’t need protection—he’s not after us! It’s just bullshit scare tactics.”

Reid rapped at the table with his knuckles absently. “No, he’s after Hotch. They’re putting his family into witness protection, you know. They found Foyet’s scent in Jack’s room and at his preschool. That’s a taunt; it’s him warning Hotch that his family isn’t safe. You think Foyet doesn’t know that by hurting one of us, he hurts Hotch even more than if he just goes straight for him?”

“But why would he take stuff from our homes if he’s after Hotch?” JJ asked Morgan, tracing the tip of her finger on the wooden tabletop. A trail of frost followed her fingertip, melting quickly and leaving a damp patch on the wood. She didn’t seem to notice. “A butterfly wind-chime from my back porch, clothes belonging to Hotch and his family…”

“Gideon said he was missing a photo album from his cabin,” Reid added. “It’s less protected than his home. Nothing is missing from my apartment. So far as Sergio and I could tell, he hasn’t even been there.”

“A book from my house,” Emily said, thinking of her missing novel. “I thought I misplaced it, but I can’t find it anywhere.”

“Nothing from me either,” Garcia said. She seemed quieter, withdrawn now. Her edges flickered erratically, a sure sign the tech nymph was upset. “But like I said, he’s hardly going to be able to get to me here.”

“A collar,” Morgan said suddenly, his voice subdued. “He must have been watching me. He took mine and not Clooney’s. They were both on the same hook.” He caught Garcia’s glance and winked at her. “I know that look, Babygirl. Get your brilliant mind out of the gutter. I know you’re picturing me in it and that’s _not_ what it’s for.”

Garcia flapped her hands at her face, solidifying slightly as she laughed. “Picturing you _only_ in it; woof indeed.” The teasing was so commonplace that Emily felt her jangling nerves settle for the first time in hours. From the smiles that spread around the room from agent to agent, the feeling was infectious.

She took a risk and reached out with her mind for Reid. _“We can survive this. We caught him once, we can do it again.”_

His reply was instant, and it was laced with barely suppressed anxiousness that brought her own fear back in force. _“Perhaps. But at what cost?”_

She looked down at the sleeping cat in her lap. There was always a cost.

 

* * *

 

It turned out the cost was more prohibitive than even she could have ever imagined it would be.

A week passed. And then another. They began to breathe again. Hotch went home to an empty house every night, while Emily got so used to the sight of Reid’s papers and books on her kitchen table that she couldn’t remember what it had looked like previously. They had a case and it went fine. Then another. And one more. If Foyet was watching, he was doing a damn good job remaining unseen.

Then, they had one last one.

Hotch glanced at the data they’d gathered. “Reid, JJ, you two head out to Hankel’s farm and question him. Find out exactly what he saw that night. Keep in touch.”

She didn’t say goodbye as Spencer walked out the door because she was focused on the case, and somehow even with Foyet hovering over them, she’d fallen into the trap of believing there was always more time.

There wasn’t.


	6. Gone

“This is why I’m a cat person,” Emily said to Morgan, swallowing back bile at the sight of the hounds tearing down their victim on the fuzzy screen. The camera moved slightly, blurring the image, but Emily could still see the milky-white eyes of the dogs and their ratty fur.

He looked just as horrified. “Those dogs don’t look right. Garcia, can we get a clearer look?”

“… Oh man. Well, maybe, but I’d have to get right up close and personal with…”

“Wait.” There was a rustle of movement behind them and the detective stepped forward, frowning in concentration. “Ah hell, I know those hounds. They attacked someone a few months ago. They looked sick then, but now… they look…”

“Dead,” Hotch finished. “Necromancy. Who owns the dogs?”

The detective paled and somehow, _somehow_ , Emily knew what he was going to say before he said it. “Hankel. Tobias Hankel.”

Necromancy.

_Reid._

As one, their palms began to burn.

 

* * *

 

Time turned strange. Thick and syrupy, like they were trying to move very quickly through honey. The car ride out to Hankel’s farm lasted days or maybe minutes. The time it took for Reid’s phone _(Reid’s phone, not Spencer’s, because she couldn’t think about what could be lost here)_ to ring out was only seconds.

_“You’ve reached Doctor Spencer Reid. I’m not available so please leave a detailed message, and I’ll return your call.”_ It was the fourth time she’d called and Reid’s voice was beginning to take a mocking kind of tone, almost spiteful: _“You’ve reached Doctor Spencer Reid. I’m not available because I’m busy trying to get myself killed. Please leave a detailed message, and I won’t return your call, ever, because I’ll be dead.”_

Morgan was calling JJ. “It says there’s no signal. Emily? Did you get Reid? Emily?”

“No,” she said calmly. “No answer from Reid either.”

If she focused on JJ, her palm burned hot. That was a comfort. She was alive. Hurt, maybe, certainly terrified at the very least. But alive. If she focused on Reid it burned as well, right up until it didn’t. She kept focusing on him until, suddenly, he was gone. Not there anymore. The burning remained for JJ, but he was _gone_. She stared at her sigil like it had betrayed her.

It wasn’t cold. He wasn’t dead. They weren’t going to find him sprawled on the ground with a bullet in his heart and his sigil black and empty. He was just… gone.

“What the fuck?” Morgan asked, glancing down at his hand in confusion. “Hotch, what the hell, I can’t feel Reid. I can’t even tell where he is!”

Hotch didn’t answer, but the car shuddered under them as he pressed his foot down.

Emily was going to kick Reid’s ass when they found him.

 

* * *

 

Out the car. Weapon in hand, runes active. Morgan shifted next to her and, at any other time, that would be fascinating. A powerfully built boxer with long legs and a barrel chest charged towards the house, nose down and tail held stiffly out behind him. Gideon followed Morgan, his own weapon holstered and face calm.

“Prentiss with me. The barn,” Hotch said.

Emily followed. She was calm. She was hyper-vigilant. Everything was stark, vivid. The acrid smell of something bitter burned nearby, a faint rotting scent mixed with wet fur. The mud sucked at her shoes and made every step an effort. Hotch moved to one side of the door and waved her through into the barn, covering her.

The first thing she knew was blood. Blood on the floor, blood under her feet; pools and splashes of it. JJ in the middle, on her knees. Alone. The hounds, dead around her, stiff and broken by the ice that had torn through them. The second thing she knew was cold, because as soon as she took a sharp breath of shock at seeing her friend, the frigid air bit at her skin and froze the saliva in her mouth. Cold fog misted from an even colder throat as she breathed, and Hotch gasped in pain as it hit him as well.

“JJ,” he said. JJ didn’t move. Emily stepped forward, waving him back, because she didn’t need him walking towards a panicked elf and ending up having his blood chilled in his veins. The blood crunched under her foot, frozen into an unfamiliar texture.

“JJ,” she repeated, her voice strong. Fog puffed in front of her mouth. “Where’s Reid?”

“Tobias Hankel is the unsub,” JJ replied, her voice monotonous. “We thought he was a witness.”

“We know,” Emily soothed, inching closer. JJ looked up, and Emily hissed in a sharp breath at the sight of the blood on her shirt and the vacant look in her blue eyes.

“I’m calling an ambulance,” Hotch murmured, backing up to the door and slipping out.

“Where’s Reid?” Emily asked, pleading now. JJ stared uncomprehendingly at her.

“I had to freeze them,” she murmured, gesturing to the dogs. “My gun didn’t work. They just kept coming. They were already dead. They just… they tore her apart and my gun didn’t work.”

“JJ, look at me.” Emily crouched in front of her and touched her arm. It was bitterly cold, searing her fingertips. Like touching a steel surface in winter. As soon as she touched JJ’s skin, the burning in her palm ceased. “Where’s Reid?”

JJ blinked and looked down at her hand, her expression clearing slightly. “What? We split up. He went around back—you can’t find him?”

Emily was already up, charging past Hotch. There was the sound of scrambling behind her; JJ following. Hotch caught JJ’s arm as she stumbled, her face deathly pale and limbs shaking. Emily tried to spare some concern for her, but she couldn’t. She had to compartmentalize. The job came first.

“Prentiss,” he said. His face was grim. “Reid followed Hankel into the cornfield.”

Gideon was right behind him. He reached a hand out and touched her elbow, a soothing gesture. Soothing. He was being soothing, and Reid was missing. The cold she felt now had nothing to do with JJ’s spellwork. “There’s a spell-snare out there,” Gideon said quietly in his ‘family of victims’ voice, and Emily could see Hotch looking strangely at him. “Keyed to Reid. This was a trap. He’s taken Reid. Hankel has Reid.”

“Okay,” Emily said, nodding firmly. “Alright. So, we do our jobs, and we get him back.” She walked past them with her head held high.

The job absolutely always came first.

 

* * *

 

Garcia looked terrified and smaller than Emily had ever seen her. Almost as though she was withdrawing into herself to protect herself from the horror of this day. She stared at the bank of computers in Hankel’s home, clutching her bag close. “I can try,” she whispered softly. “But Hotch… sir. My power comes from the Bureau. Out here? I’ve got nothing. Nada. I’m a plant in a box cut off from the sun. I don’t know what I can do.”

“You can find him,” Hotch said firmly. “Same as the rest of us. We _are_ going to find him, Garcia. Hankel’s computer is an extension of his brain, we need you to unpack it.”

“Oh god,” she murmured, shuddering with horror. Emily suppressed a shudder of her own. It was bad enough being in Hankel’s home, surrounded by piles of old journals and dust and filth. She couldn’t imagine stepping into his head.

Then, Garcia straightened. Sometimes, Emily forget how strong the people around her were.

“Okay,” Garcia said, nodding. “Right. Let’s bring our boy home.”

“Atta-girl,” Gideon called out from the next room.

 

* * *

 

“Oh my _god_.” Garcia’s shriek roused them all, every head turning to her. She was standing, her form flickering wildly, panicking. “Hotch, Hotch, Hotch,” she yammered, turning and holding her hands to her mouth. “I’ve got… oh god. Emails. I found emails. On his father’s username.”

They all stared at her, waiting. Emily almost giggled. Almost. It was like they were waiting for the punchline to a really bad joke, one that just kept on keeping on. When it came, it was a punch to the gut for all of them, but none so much as Hotch. Emily hid her own horror behind a practised mask, watching their leader’s shoulder slump slightly as though the weight of all this had just fallen squarely onto his shoulders. He didn’t say anything, but they could all see _my fault, my fault_ in the lines of his shoulders and spine. It occurred to her that if they didn’t save their friend, she might break, but so would Hotch and they might never be able to put him back together.

“They don’t say much. Just… just plans to lure us out here. The BAU. Us, crimes to lure us here and information, lots of it, on… Reid. It’s all on Reid. Stuff that _we_ don’t even know.” Her voice hitched, and she was looking directly at Hotch. “They’re just signed ‘The Reaper.’”

 

* * *

 

She came up behind JJ when the woman was staring into the mirror in Hankel’s bathroom as though she hated the person reflected back at her, and that was a mistake, because JJ almost shot her.

“It’s me,” she breathed, staring down the barrel of JJ’s service weapon. She supposed she should be glad JJ hadn’t frozen her on the spot. She’d never been a fan of the cold. “Are you alright?”

JJ lowered her gun, but the wild look didn’t leave her pale eyes. Emily could see the guilt on every line of her innocent face, even under the make-up that the elf wore to make herself look older; to add years where other women would try to mask them. “I’m fine,” she stammered, holstering her weapon slowly and running her newly free hand through her damp blonde hair. “You just… scared me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Emily?” The softness was gone from JJ’s voice now, replaced by a bitterness that Emily couldn’t work out if it was aimed at her or at JJ herself. “How come this isn’t bothering you?”

_You have no idea how much I’m bothered,_ Emily thought wildly for a second, the firm shield against the pain of this day she’d erected buckling and cracking down the middle, threatening to dump it all on her before she was ready to deal with it. “What do you mean?”

JJ’s expression was cold. “You think I don’t know that you’ve been seeing him? Spence?  For what, two months now?”

Emily didn’t feel anything. No panic at being caught, no relief at being free of the lies. Nothing. “Three. Kind of.” _Four months since I met him; fourteen weeks since I’ve known him; twelve weeks since I first kissed him; what feels like forever that I’ve loved him._

“And he’s gone, god knows where. Anything could be happening to him, and you haven’t faltered. You didn’t flinch when we found the spell-snares. You didn’t react when we found Foyet’s emails. You haven’t… Christ, Emily, I’m here trying not to fall apart, and you haven’t even said his name since you found me in the barn.”

“She’s right,” said a low voice behind them. Hotch. Shit. “You haven’t blinked once. Emily, compartmentalizing is one thing. But if you’re emotionally compromised and you try to push it all away, ignore it, it’s going to cripple you right when you need to be clear-headed.”

“I’m fine, Hotch,” she said, and it wasn’t a lie. Not yet. She was. “I can do this. My feelings for… my feelings have nothing to do with it. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think I could do my job, no matter what happens in the field.” _Besides, we’re all emotionally fucking compromised_ ¸ was what she actually wanted to say, but one look at his ashen skin and eyes that were red-rimmed with exhaustion and guilt quickly deflected that desire.

Then, Garcia screamed.

 

* * *

 

“He’s been beaten,” JJ gasped. Emily said nothing. They all stared at the screens, and she knew they all took different information from the nightmarish images projected to them. She stared and memorised every bruise, every cut, every injury this fucker had done to him. She’d repay it tenfold.

“I’m gonna put this guy’s head on a stick,” snarled Morgan, and she could hear the rumbling growl of the dog in his voice.

Emily moved her gaze down him, over the mud on his clothes and the way he had his left arm tucked against his stomach protectively. Right on down to the runes surrounding him. The circle. She studied it. Recognised it.

And then she almost vomited from the agony of it.

“I can’t track him,” Garcia gasped helplessly, right as Gideon sucked in a breath that was almost a groan and said, “That’s a binding circle.”

“Don’t,” Reid groaned, and the fear in his voice was audible and choking. He backed away from the camera, the person behind it, his foot scuffing the side of the circle and stopping like it had hit a brick wall instead of a roughly painted line on the floor. “Please, don’t. I don’t want to be bound to you; you’re nothing more than a poacher!”

When the voice began to speak, none of them reacted at first.

_“Prieumaton dominator virtutis nomine et in palatia caeli, benedicat tibi…”_

“Emily,” Hotch said, turning his head slightly. “Emily, what’s he saying? What’s he doing?”

Emily didn’t answer, her eyes locked on the sight of Spencer’s knees buckling, his eyes widening in shock and dread as the paint below him began to writhe and bubble. It came alive, leeching up from the ground with long oily tendrils, and slithered towards him, closing the circle in around his inexplicably bare feet.

_“…et domos tuas sedes gaudium et virtutem et ligabunt te in fundo Abaddon usque ad diem iudicii non erit finis...”_

Spencer screamed, dropped his glamour, and _surged_ the circle with the full extent of his magic, the camera crackling with the power that lashed the room. Wings outstretching and whirling in place, the air buckled in the circle even as white lightning danced out of his fingertips in a funnel around him.

The circle bent. Cracked. Strained, almost broke.

Held.

“Emily?”

Her voice was lost, a whisper. She couldn’t think about the words as they fell unbidden from her lips. Spencer screamed again, nothing human about the sound anymore as it ripped from his chest, the circle reaching his legs and smoking as it touched his bare skin. “I bind thee in the depth of Abaddon, to remain until the Day of Judgment whose end cannot be.”

_“... Ignis et sulphur, et ligabunt te in freta veneno mixtum igne et sulphure: veni foras ergo audieritis vocem meam et ante hunc circulum...”_

The circle thickened, oozing up from the ground as a gelatinous sludge, thick and dark as old blood. It seeped up his legs despite his desperate attempts to throw it off, reached his knees, his waist, his stomach, his magic faltered, he faltered…

“And I bind thee in the fire of sulphur mingled with poison and the seas of fire and sulphur: come, forth, therefore, obey my power and appear before, this circle.”

“He’s panicking,” Gideon snapped, his voice cracking. “He’s going to burn himself out; he’s making it easier for him!”

“He’s losing.” JJ covered her eyes.

His arms. Twining around his wrists, slicing the skin, blood mixing with the secretions that covered him. His magic stopped, he stopped, his scream petering off into a sob that was both wrecked and terrified beyond comprehension. It was a noise she wanted to forget as soon as she heard it.

She never would.

_“Et venit in nomine sanctorum Zabaoth Domine Amioran. Veni ! Ego enim sum Dominus incitat te qui.”_

“Therefore, come forth in the name of the Holy Ones Zabaoth, Adonai, Amioran. Come! for I am Adonai who stir thee up.” She was going to be sick. She was going to fall. She was falling, except her knees were locked and she hadn’t moved, the only one who wasn’t reacting as even his moans stopped and his eyes turned blank and shattered, broken glass, reflecting nothing and everything all at once.

_“Et ligabunt te exibunt ad me et custodiunt ! Mea sunt enim omnia corpore et anima, et vincula franguntur.”_

He closed his eyes.

_And I bind thee, come forth, belong to me and obey! For you are mine, in body and soul, and your ties are broken._

He fell, and the circle closed on him.

 

* * *

 

“I thought you said binding takes hours.” Morgan was the first to speak after the camera switched off. They had all moved away from the room, splintering, separating to deal with their grief alone. Except Emily. She stayed by the screens, staring at them. Trying to push the image of him away from where it had been burned into her retinas and her mind.

“It does.” Gideon was sitting at the table, his head in his hands. Beaten. The great Jason Gideon, fucking beaten. “That was the last stage. It was still fast, considering Reid’s reserves. He must have something that weakened him somehow. There’s still time though—these spells take days, even weeks, to truly settle. Reid can still fight this, and he is stronger than Hankel. Hankel _will not_ break him.”

“There’s still time,” Emily parroted, her lips numb around the words; the first time she’d spoken since the screen had gone black and taken his image with it. Their eyes on her, she could feel them burning. Distantly, she recognised the symptoms of shock. She was surprised no one else had yet.

Her hands shook slightly, very slightly.

“Oh shit, Emily.” Morgan. Touching her. She pulled away, tried to snarl at him to fuck off, but her mouth and brain weren’t speaking to each other anymore around the mess Reid had made of her thoughts. “Hey, hey. It’s okay. Come on. Come here.” He pulled her close, and she stopped struggling and let her head fall against his chest for a second, just a second, and tried to see if his heart beat in the same rhythm as Spencer’s did when they were together.

She couldn’t remember.

 

* * *

 

They received a second video. Emily hung back, torn between wanting to see him again and not wanting to know what he looked like when his soul was broken. Seeing him won out, and she walked into the room on lead-filled legs to find a nightmare.

“Obey me!” shrieked a madman, and Reid didn’t even look up from where he was curled on the floor with his knees to his chest, his head bowed. His arms gleamed slickly with red and gold; blood and binding. She wanted to tear at it with her nails, claw it off of him, feel the pain as it tore at her fingers as she freed him.

“No,” he said quietly. He rippled with pain as he said it.

“Choose one to die! Your seven team members—the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound them. The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth. Now choose one!”

“Go to hell.” The last time Emily had heard that tone, he’d been stubbornly refusing to eat the food she’d given him with the chopsticks she was trying to force him to use. She’d hidden every fork in her home, and he’d ended up eating with his fingers and smirking the whole time. She remembered him dropping a noodle on his shirt and leaving a smear of peanut butter sauce on the collar; remembered helping him scrub it off, the soap on their fingers, on his chin when he’d itched at it, on her chin when she’d kissed him…

It hurt to remember.

_Pick one,_ Emily thought, and she could see the thought mirrored in every face in the room with her as the ripples shuddered over their friend again, and he still resisted. _Pick me, Spencer. Please oh god please pick me. Don’t let him hurt you._

_“In extremo iudicio iudico iustitiam tuam vultum quia tu legem istam quae non possum, et non audivit Dominus Deus, et non audivit quod victus spiritus invoco soni et potens, qui mitto.”_

Reid looked up and snarled, baring sharp teeth and twisting his face into a mockery of the Spencer they knew. Even in her fear, she couldn’t be prouder of him. “Kill me,” he spat, and the pride vanished like a candle being snuffed. _Don’t you fucking dare, you fucking bastard. You don’t get to die yet. We’re not done yet._ JJ looked at her. She may have said that out loud, judging from the stunned look on the elf’s face. She couldn’t bring herself to care.

_“Ardens in igne, cuius finis non erit et proiciam te in corde maris tormentorum, ex quibus non resurget donec venias meos visita me pacis amicitia juxta. Circulum in momento in similitudinem non timore hominum vel animalium omnium filiorum hominum super terram. Audite vocem meam.”_

She wasn’t translating that for them, but her face must have shown her horror even as Reid screamed again, a dying scream, the ripples turning to waves that seared his skin as they passed over it. He buckled, clutched at his stomach: kept. Fucking. Screaming.

_I burn thee in fire whose end cannot be and I cast thee down unto the seas of torment, out of which thou shalt not rise until thou come to my eyes: visit me in peace: be friendly before the circle in the moment in the likeness of a man not unto the terror of the sons of men the creatures or all things on the face of the earth. Obey my power._

She might have stepped back or she might have covered her ears, but she wasn’t sure anymore as he vomited from the pain; red on his mouth, the floor, and he fell again, but this time he wasn’t still when he hit the ground. Seizing, his body shuddering and eyes rolling back so that only the whites showed between uneven lids. She couldn’t make a noise, a scream blocking her throat too large to escape, and he was dying.

“He’s killing him!” shrieked Garcia. Her form shifted, she reached for the screen. She was going to try and travel through it, find him herself. She couldn’t. She was too weak outside the Bureau, it would destroy her. They’d lose them both. Morgan caught her arm before she could try it, dragging her away. His turn to hold her now, to cover her face so she couldn’t see Spencer Reid choose to die rather than hurt them.

_He can’t actually die,_ Emily thought as he stilled, one hand still twitching sporadically and a mixture of blood and spit oozing from the corner of his slack mouth. The mouth that she’d tasted. The mouth that she’d kissed, had kissed her back. The mouth that she loved, and that was now turning blue as he stopped breathing. _He wouldn’t die. He wouldn’t, he knows how much that would hurt us._ Besides, logically, how could this be the end of them when they’d barely even begun?

But he did.

 

* * *

 

He came back. He was dead, by Emily’s count, for just under four minutes. He died on that floor, the life leaving his body, and he came back. Everyone else was happy, relieved, except Emily.

Except Gideon.

Because he was dead and then he wasn’t, cast into torment until Hankel called him back, and a demon was bound to no one as strongly as to one who drew them back from oblivion. There was a reason necromancy was so loathed. At least death was some kind of release, even if every part of her rebelled against the thought of him hollow and rotting.

“Choose one to die,” said the voice they all despised again, and this time Reid barely reacted. He blinked, disoriented, his movements sluggish. He tried to stand, but his hand slipped on the slick floor, clumsy, and he whimpered as his palm smacked the ground wetly. He had always been a bastion of movement before, fingers twitching and feet jiggling perpetually, but now he’d turned still and slow. A stranger in his body.

“Aaron Hotchner,” he said finally, and Emily thought for a moment that she might break with him. “He’s a classic narcissist. He always puts himself before the team. Genesis 23:4: ‘Let him not deceive himself and trust in emptiness, vanity, falseness, and futility, for these shall be his recompense. For god's will’.”

The screen went black again and Hotch snapped, close enough to shattering himself that Emily could see herself reflected in his dark eyes: “I’m not a narcissist!”

“He’s not himself, Hotch,” Gideon said in a low voice. “Hankel’s in his head, you can’t…”

“No, stop. Reid and I argued about the definition of classic narcissism, he knew I would remember that. And he quoted Genesis, chapter 23, verse 4. Read it.” He was breathing quickly, eyes glittering, wild with the olive branch Reid had just extended to them. “‘I am a stranger and a sojourner with you. Give me property, forbear a place among you that I may bury my dead out of my sight.’ He wouldn't get it wrong unless it was on purpose.”

Hope flared.

“He’s still him,” Emily breathed, and the numbing, choking horror of the past two days dispelled. “He’s still him in there, he’s given us a clue. He’s telling us where he is.”

They were bringing him _home_.

“He’s in a graveyard,” Hotch declared, and the fission of anger and furious excitement that rushed through them all ignited Emily’s nerves and made her hands itch for her gun, for her runes, for action. “We’re bringing him home, everyone. Now.”

As one, they moved. A team again.

A team with all their hearts tied to the one empty space in the room.

 

* * *

 

They found him standing alone in the graveyard, and when he looked at them approaching him it was with hope in his eyes. At least, that was what she thought at first, her heart almost twisting out of her ribcage with shock and delight at the sight of him. She sped up almost subconsciously into a jog. Then, someone’s flashlight beam, probably Hotch’s since he was right behind her, illuminated Reid’s face properly, and she saw what she’d taken for hope was actually a fragmented kind of resignation.

He raised his hand as though to salute them, his eyes glazed and skin grey except for where he gleamed gold. His wings drooped from his back limply, trailing in the dirt, blood and filth coating him. They were close enough that she could see the pinpoint dots of his pupils in her vision, not reacting to the lights that danced on his sallow features.

“I knew you’d understand,” Spencer said, his voice harsh and edged with the sound of his former screams. He was looking at Hotch, who froze.

“Spencer,” Hotch murmured, and took a single step towards him. None of them moved or breathed. The sound of his shoe on the loamy earth echoed. “We can undo this.”

Reid ignored him, looking at her and smiling faintly; a fucking mockery of a smile with too many teeth, nothing like him, and she wanted to reel back from it. There was a look in his expression that suggested he was about to start pleading. “Hey, Em. If you get the chance, take the shot. I’m sorry.” A touch in her mind followed that and she opened to him without thinking. The rush of torment that hit her almost brought her down; his thoughts a disordered whirlwind of _I don’t want this help me please I’m not weak don’t let this happen_ almost drowned out by a background hum of _your ties are broken your ties are broken your ties are broken._

_“I love you,”_ he whispered, and she felt the phantom touch of wind on her lips, desperate and fleeting. _“Goodbye…”_

“Don’t you fucking dare!” she screamed, knowing what he was going to do before he did it. She couldn’t hear through the rushing of blood in her ears, and Hotch didn’t reach her before Spencer threw a half-hearted attack in her direction, barely managing not to miss. She could have shot him in that moment, but she didn’t. She could have blocked his spell, but she didn’t. That’s what he wanted. He wanted Gideon or Hotch to take the shot, to stop him, to end this.

She welcomed the pain it brought when it struck her. Instead of getting up, she lay there and listened to the sound of everything ending.

 

* * *

 

It turned out Sergio had been wrong. Spencer absolutely could beat Gideon, if given the chance. Beat Gideon and vanish to wherever he’d been told to go, leaving them bruised and battered. But alive. She wondered if Hankel had told him to leave them alive, or if Reid had just earned himself another punishment. He could have killed them.

She had a vague memory of looking up and seeing Spencer dodge JJ’s defensive spell easily, colliding with Hotch, the two of them locked together in a parody of an embrace with Spencer’s mouth close to Hotch’s ear. She wondered what he was saying, if he was saying anything. They fell, Hotch cried out, blood, Spencer vanishing. For a moment, when Hotch had fallen, she’d believed he was dead. She’d thought Spencer had killed him.

He hadn’t. Hotch had gotten up again, shaken and pale. Spencer hadn’t even hurt him that bad, any of them. The bruises on their hearts would linger a long time after their skin healed. Every spell he threw missed by inches, every sweeping attack glanced off of them instead of striking. She thought he might have been crying, but she couldn’t think about that without her heart breaking. And when he’d left… _“Don’t look for me. It’s what he wants.”_

She was sitting on the ground, in the dirt, knees to her chest just like Spencer had sat, and she was vulnerable, so fucking vulnerable like this, but it didn’t matter because the one thing she knew could destroy her had already happened. She was hurt, she could feel pain. Later, she was going to have to deal with that, but at the moment it was eclipsed by the overwhelming agony of knowing that she’d failed him. Hankel had bound him, trapped him, taken him.

Nails cut into her hands as she clenched them, pressing her eyes into the bones of her knees so hard that red dots flashed on her lids. It hurt, thinking of the begging way he’d looked at her, thinking of him alive or dead or trapped or just not there anymore, thinking of that final illusory kiss. There might not be another.

“Emily.” A hand on her leg: Gideon. His voice ragged, breathing heavily. He’d taken hits as well. More than any of them. And he could have stopped this as well, she wasn’t the only one with a clear shot, but he hadn’t. She wasn’t the only one who had found herself to be weak when she had thought that she was strong. “Get up. Let’s get you checked out, come on.”

“He’s gone,” she mumbled into her legs, and for the first time since they’d realized they’d sent Spencer and JJ into the lion’s mouth, she felt tears burn at the back of her eyes and her throat closing, choking her. “He’s gone.”

He was gone.


	7. Impact

They travelled home in silence. Where once there were seven, six now remained. Emily spent the entire ride home counting and recounting just in case they’d somehow made a mistake. Gideon sat in front of the chessboard and stared at it blankly. Hotch stared straight ahead and didn’t move, didn’t speak. Morgan curled up on the couch with his back to everyone, but Emily knew he wasn’t sleeping. JJ and Garcia huddled together. Emily could hear crying but she wasn’t sure whose, and she didn’t want to get up and check in case she lost count again.

They stepped off the plane, still no one had spoken, and Sergio was there.

_“What’s happened? What’s going on?”_ he demanded, appearing in front of them and bristling, twice his usual size. _“You were scared and hurt and too far away for me to reach, what happened?”_ Emily didn’t answer. No one did. She wasn’t sure if that was because none of them wanted to say it or if they simply couldn’t hear him. She picked her cat up and held him close, feeling his heartbeat drumming in his slender chest. _“Where’s Reid?”_ he asked finally, putting his paws on her shoulders and leaning close to her face, examining her with his grey-green eyes. _“Emily, where’s Reid?”_

“Gone,” she murmured eventually into his fur and closed her eyes. Someone touched her hand, but she didn’t know who.

_Gone._

 

* * *

 

** UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE **

** FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION **

**Internal Memo**

**Confidential Memorandum Unclassified // For Official Use Only**

 

> **To:** Emily Prentiss
> 
> **From:** SES Erin Strauss
> 
> **Subject:** Notice of Intended Disciplinary Action
> 
> **Date:** 02/12/2007
> 
> E. Prentiss
> 
> Your disciplinary hearing concerning the events between 02/07/2007 to 02/09/2007 has been scheduled for 1 pm on 02/27/2007. The board will consider whether you will be held peculiarly liable for events that occurred during the attached case file, either due directly to your actions or lack thereof. Until then, you are officially on paid suspension pending investigation into your case. The correspondence and supporting documentation of your case are enclosed.
> 
> Any questions or complaints should be directed to your Unit Chief SSA Aaron Hotchner and forwarded to my office through him.
> 
> We ask that you do not discuss the details of your case with any agents also currently undergoing investigation. Thank you for your cooperation.
> 
> Regards, the Office of Erin Strauss
> 
> Behavioural Analysis Unit, Quantico

 

* * *

 

**JJ: Morgan’s worried about you. Are you okay?**

**JJ: I mean, I know you’re not okay… but please just let us know that you’re still breathing at least.**

**To JJ:**    **.**

**JJ: Thank you.**

 

* * *

 

**Morgan: He wouldn’t want this. You gotta let us in.**

**Morgan: He’s not dead Prentiss. Stop acting like he is – he’s gonna be so pissed when he gets back and he finds out you spent two weeks locked in your apartment ignoring everyone.**

**To Morgan: He’s not coming home.**

**Morgan: You’re wrong.**

* * *

**Bossman: Did everyone receive emails with details of their hearings? They will be held over the 26/27-th of this month. Discussion of the case outside of these hearings will result in immediate disciplinary action.**

**To Bossman: Received.**

* * *

“What did you want, Garcia?” Emily stopped in the door of Garcia’s den, almost groaning when Morgan swivelled around to face her. He opened his mouth, face darkening at the sight of her, but Garcia beat him to it.

“Get in here and shut the door,” she hissed, looking guilty. “It’s about to start.” Despite her reservations, Emily slipped into the room and pushed the door shut with a _snick_. Sergio bounded up and leapt onto Garcia’s lap, purring brilliantly. He, at least, was happy to be back in the office. Garcia and Morgan both looked… tired. Sad.

Emily had spent the entire day trying to avoid the bullpen and the desk that had acquired a layer of dust over the past two weeks that, unlike hers, no one had bothered to clean off. The sight of it made it very hard to keep intact the careful mask she’d rebuilt since he’d been taken.

“Okay so, _Derek, be nice_ , what we’re doing now is so super illegal that if anyone finds out, we won’t only be fired, they’ll probably put pictures up on dartboards on the walls of the BAU as an example to others.”

Morgan stopped trying to get Emily’s attention and turned to the bubbly techie. “Wait, you said we were going to kill time until my hearing. You didn’t say anything about—”

Garcia bit her lip. “Well… Okay, so… do you want to see JJ’s hearing? Because she’s first and… there’s a camera in there. They won’t know if I hotlink it.”

They didn’t answer. That was answer enough. The screen fuzzed; Garcia muttered something under her breath. It cleared. The camera was facing the door, empty seats. They couldn’t see anything, but they could hear faint, distorted voices.

“We missed some of it,” Morgan muttered, leaning closer to the speakers. Garcia hushed him.

“When it became apparent that Tobias Hankel was the man you were looking for, why did you not immediately contact Agent Hotchner and your team to request backup?”

JJ’s voice was steady, and Emily’s stomach panged at the sound of it. JJ’s messages had been getting increasingly desperate in the two weeks since Georgia, and Emily couldn’t face any of them.

At least with Morgan’s she could, and did, get angry.

> “As far as we knew, Hankel still had a living victim. He realized we were onto him and attempted to evade capture. Dr. Reid and I—”
> 
> “Was Dr. Reid aware of Hankel’s abilities as a necromancer and the particular danger that Hankel posed to him?”
> 
> “We were aware—”
> 
> “If you were aware that Hankel had the ability to restrain Dr. Reid in such a way as he did, why did you not avoid a direct confrontation with him?”
> 
> “We were aware that he was a necromancer but not that Dr. Reid was in any danger from him, no more than I or anyone else on our team. The safeguards that—”
> 
> “The safeguards that failed, Agent Jareau. Do you have any idea why the mental shields that should have protected Dr. Reid against this very situation failed him in such a spectacular fashion?”
> 
> “I’m afraid I don’t know, sir.”

Morgan slammed his hand on the table, making them both jump. Sergio almost fell off Garcia’s lap, turning to glare at Morgan with narrowed eyes. “They’re not even fucking letting her talk,” he spat, bunching his fists. “This isn’t a hearing, it’s a goddamn witch-hunt.”

“I’m not okay with this,” Garcia mumbled, covering her eyes. Emily leaned over and rested her hand on her shoulder, offering what small comfort she could. “Oh, _JJ_.”

The masculine voice continued, relentless:

> “Why did you and Dr. Reid split up?”
> 
> “We reasoned that Agent Hotchner and our team would come looking for us and that we could wait Hankel out after he took shelter in the barn.”
> 
> “Did you hear Dr. Reid call out for assistance after the spell-snare triggered? He must have done so.”
> 
> “I was… attacked. By wights in the form of hounds. I didn’t hear—”
> 
> “You fired your weapon?”
> 
> “Yes. I emptied my clip and then—”
> 
> “Is it possible that the sound of your weapon discharging was what distracted Dr. Reid from his surroundings and caused him to fail to notice the spell-snare?”
> 
> “I… I don’t understand the question.”

Emily closed her eyes as Morgan snarled in fury. He was right. This was a witch-hunt.

 

* * *

 

**To Spencer: Where the fuck are you? Just give us some sort of sign that you’re alive. Please.**

**To Spencer: JJ had her hearing today. Morgan’s is next, then Gideon’s. We all have one. You’re big news here, the FBI hasn’t lost an agent like this before. You’ve made history, but they’re looking for someone to blame. Mine is tomorrow.**

**To Spencer: I’m so fucking mad at you.**

**To Spencer:**    **Don’t give up. You’re stronger than he is. We’re not going to stop looking for you, not ever.**

* * *

Back in Garcia’s room but with JJ instead of Morgan, and the tension in the room was palatable. Sergio snuggled around JJ this time and kept up a steady, almost manic purr to try and soothe the elf’s shattered nerves. They all pretended not to notice her red-rimmed eyes, but Garcia held one of her hands, and Emily sat close enough to her that their elbows brushed every time JJ reached up to rub her face.

> “We received no notification, no communication at all, regarding Dr. Reid’s abduction. Do you have any idea why this information was kept from the Bureau?”
> 
> “You’ll have to ask my superiors. I’m sure they had a good reason.”
> 
> “You’re protecting them, Agent Morgan. Why?”
> 
> “I’m not protecting them, we did nothing wrong. We followed standard procedure, and we did find him.”
> 
> “But not in time.”
> 
> “… No, not in time.”
> 
> “Have you considered that, by not alerting the Bureau and not utilizing the full extent of its resources in recovering Dr. Reid, your superiors are directly responsible for his continued imprisonment?”
> 
> “With all due respect, sir, that’s bullshit.”
> 
> “Agent Morgan!”

Emily dropped her head into her hands. JJ sighed, but there was no surprise in her tone. Garcia made a noise like she was being stepped on.

One down.

 

* * *

 

Garcia ordered food. Emily opened the bag and almost gagged at the smell.

Tikka Masala.

She gave hers to Anderson on her way to the bathroom and heaved until her stomach was empty, and she could blame her blurred vision on the stink of vomit.

It was never really going to be the same again.

 

* * *

 

“Gideon’s up.” Morgan slipped into the room, avoided all their gazes, and sat as far away from them as he could get.

“Hotch isn’t going to be happy you just landed yourself another two weeks of suspension,” JJ said quietly.

Morgan shrugged. “Hotch has bigger things to worry about.”

>             “Agent Gideon, regarding the events of—”

The camera fizzed and cut out. Garcia looked sheepish. “Okay, so I said _they_ wouldn’t notice it. I never said Gideon wouldn’t.”

JJ smacked Emily’s hand. Emily let it drop into her lap, not having even noticed that she’d been chewing on her nails. There was the tang of copper in her mouth. “Do you think Gideon’s going to be pissed?” Emily asked, to deflect that icy blue stare.

This time, Morgan laughed coldly. “I think Gideon has bigger things to worry about as well, don’t you? If they want to make an example of someone, they can’t really get a bigger target than him.”

“Let’s hope they don’t,” Emily responded, her voice steady. It was easy to keep in control at work. Easier to push all the things that clawed at her away, push them into a box in the back of her mind and tape it up. When she was home, the box was too small to shove all the reminders into without the sides buckling. “We need Gideon.”

“Yeah,” Morgan agreed, and the coldness was gone and replaced with a fierceness Emily hadn’t expected. “I mean, if we’re gonna go out there and drag Reid back here, we need Gideon’s particular brand of badass.” He stared at her as he said this, and he made it seem like a threat.

She wished she could believe it was going to be that simple.

 

* * *

 

**To Spencer: I can’t help but wonder where you are. Is it cold there too? The warm blanket still smells like you.**

**To Spencer: I hope they’re giving you coffee. They won’t know what they’re dealing with if they don’t give you coffee. With more than lots of sugar, right?**

* * *

 

She’d been sleeping on her couch for two weeks. It saved her having to face the empty bed. At least, that’s what she tried to tell herself. In reality, some small part of her knew that the longer she left the bed untouched, the longer she could retain some small part of him in the scent that still clung to the sheets and pillows.

The night before her hearing, she gave in and crawled between the covers, curling around the pillow on the side he had favoured and allowing herself a moment of weakness. There was no one there to see. She was alone. She inhaled the smell of his shampoo and soap and desperately _reached_ with her mind for the familiar feel of his thoughts. It was like plunging into a pitch-black space for a safety line that had always been there before; the disorientating sensation of her fingers finding nothing and coming back empty.

Silence.

It hurt. There weren’t words to describe how much.

_“Emily.”_ Her stomach flipped for a second and then pinched as she registered who the voice was or, rather, who it wasn’t. The covers dipped, the soft sounds of his paws coming towards her. _“Oh, little witch. There is no shame in your pain. You don’t have to withhold it_ — _you help no one by doing so.”_

“I miss him,” she mumbled into her pillow, and she felt her gut clench again, a physical pain that made her bite at her lip. Her throat ached no matter how much she cleared it, her jaws sore from gritting her teeth. “Fuck, Serge. I miss him so much.”

_“I know. I’m sorry. I can’t bring him back, but I can be here for you. And I always will be, for as long as I am able.”_

The noise that tore from her chest _hurt_ like a kick to the chest, ripping through her. It wasn’t a sob, although that’s what it started out as, and it felt like it left a hole as it came through which all her pain and misery could seep out of. A visible wound that she could point to and say, _‘see how much he hurt me?’_ so she could avoid their probing questions and observations about her mental state. The physical scars Doyle had left on her had never hurt this much.

Reid had turned out to be just like him after all. They’d both left her bleeding.

 

* * *

 

Her turn.

She could see strain in Strauss’ profile, a reserved kind of pity. The rest of the faces showed no such kindness. She wondered if they knew about her relationship with Spencer. If they did, she was going to walk out of here unemployed.

“Can you please tell us, to the best of your abilities, the events that transpired on the ninth of this month being February, involving the necromancer Tobias Hankel and FBI Behavioural Analyst, Dr. Spencer Reid?”

She could do this. Just any other case. Just any other man. She stared straight at Strauss as she spoke, numbly intoning what had happened, just as her teammates had before her.

She could do this.

“You saw him bound? Are you sure it was a binding circle? Your specialty is runes, is it not?”

“It is. I know the circle, I know the spellwork. He was bound, well and truly.”

One of the men cut in, leaning forward. There was a hungry look in his eyes that Emily mistrusted immediately. “In your opinion, is it likely that Hankel will seek to use Dr. Reid against the US Government and this Bureau?”

Emily swallowed. Hard. “Tobias Hankel is a very sick man. His severe abusive upbringing and extensive drug dependence, not to mention the mental destruction that necromancy causes in its users, all led to his mind splitting several months ago, following the death of his father.”

“Answer the question, Agent Prentiss.”

_Fuck you._ “No. Singularly, I don’t believe that Tobias Hankel is focused or organized enough to use Reid in a structured attack. Nor do I believe that he has the mental fortitude to force Reid into such an act.” _But if Foyet’s pulling his strings…_

“Explain your last statement.”

“Binding a demon isn’t a one off—you don’t just cast the initial spell and gain yourself a mindless slave. So long as he is breathing, Dr. Reid can fight. And if Hankel is weaker than Reid, which he absolutely is, Reid can refuse to obey.” She couldn’t help the defensive snap to her voice, seeing Strauss raise an eyebrow.

“And if he isn’t weaker than Dr. Reid?”

Emily tried to answer, but her mouth had gone so dry she couldn’t find the words. She just stared.

“Agent Prentiss.”

She stammered. Emily Prentiss, the great Emily Prentiss, bastion of having her shit together, stammered like a child. “Then… Dr. Reid will have no choice. But he’s…”

Strauss cut the man off before he could speak again, and it was definitely pity in her eyes now. “Agent Prentiss, I must ask. Even if Dr. Reid is stronger than Hankel, what is the cost of his disobedience?”

Emily could answer this. She just needed to disassociate. Stop thinking of Spencer. This wasn’t Spencer with the clever hands and the quick smile she was talking about; it was Reid, who had taken this job knowing full well the risks and done it anyway. “Pain. Hankel can cause him pain, increasing amounts depending on the severity of his disobedience. Given enough time, the levels of pain would become impossible for him to resist. But this would take time.” _And if, somehow, Morgan is right, we’ll have him home by then._ “Similar to POWs who have torture inflicted upon them for extended periods.”

“In your opinion, as both an agent and a mage, can Dr. Reid resist Hankel’s influence?”

“Yes. I have absolutely no doubt.”

_He fucking better._

 

* * *

 

**To Spencer: Good morning. I hate you.**

**To Spencer: I didn’t mean that. If you’re getting these, I’m sorry. You’re probably not. Your phone is probably in a ditch somewhere in Georgia.**

**To Spencer: Since you’re not getting these… I love you too.**

* * *

 

> “You do understand that with the circumstances surrounding Dr. Reid’s abduction and subsequent enslavement under Tobias Hankel that there will be repercussions, don’t you, Agent Hotchner?”
> 
> “Of course, ma’am. But my team is not to blame.”
> 
> “Your team has lost one of their own. Not only lost, but had him turned against them. As Unit Chief, a failure of this magnitude rests solely on your shoulders.”
> 
> “I believe that Dr. Reid will fight with everything he has. He won’t be turned against the Bureau so easily. We still have time to—”
> 
> “When you agreed to take a demon, a free-bound demon no less, onto your team you swore that safeguards would be put into place to ensure that this _exact_ thing did not happen. And yet, here we stand.”
> 
> “Those safeguards were taken, within reason, I don’t—”
> 
> “May I interrupt, Chief Strauss, Agent Hotchner? We’ve been investigating claims of misconduct within the medical magi. While our staff are, of course, absolutely up to standard, there appears to be some discrepancies in the dark magus that was supplied to Dr. Reid and the other dark affined employees here. While further investigation is needed, it does appear that Dr. Reid’s initial vulnerabilities could be tied to that, and not any failing by Agent Hotchner or the doctor himself.”
> 
> “Nevertheless, action must be taken. I will be replacing Dr. Reid with someone suitable to handling a crisis such as this one. Since it seems likely that Dr. Reid will be used against us—”
> 
> “I don’t believe—”
> 
> “This isn’t a matter of your beliefs! Whether you like the idea or not, he _does not_ , and I repeat again, _does not_ have any control over his actions anymore. If he is turned against the Bureau, you are required to do your damn job, Aaron.”
> 
> “I won’t harm one of my own.”
> 
> “Then we will replace you with someone who will.”

 

* * *

 

She walked into the squad room and found Hotch staring down at their desks. “Emily…” he said quietly, but she’d already seen them.

He caught her arm before she could charge forward. “It’s only been two weeks,” she gasped, whirling on him and ripping her arm out of his grip, as close to losing control in front of him as she’d ever been. “They can’t do this!” Below them, the agents chosen for the job avoided eye-contact with everyone as they cleared out Reid’s desk, packing his belongings with almost painful care. In any other situation, if it was any other desk, Emily would have felt sorry for them. But the desk wasn’t just anyone’s, the boxes they were filling had _‘Spencer Reid’_ stencilled clearly on the side, and she couldn’t just watch his novelty fucking mug and stupid physics toys disappear into them without doing _something_. Her fingers itched and for a wild, insane moment, Emily Prentiss considered letting go of the control she’d mastered over her life and sticking their arms to their sides with a well-placed curse.

“They’ve replaced him,” Hotch said, his expression barely changing. Barely. There was a flicker, a twitch at the corner of his mouth. Anger. His lips whitened slightly. She was getting better at reading his moods. “It was part of their disciplinary action. They chose his replacement. They… have their reasons behind their choice.” His hand tightened slightly on the rail. He was _furious_.

“Who?” she asked, turning away from the sight of the nameplate with his name on it vanishing into the box as well. She couldn’t stop them. Hotch couldn’t lose another team member, not with Morgan suspended still and Reid…

“They’re letting us keep looking for Reid, however, I won’t be leading the case.”

He was avoiding the question. “Who, Hotch?”

“David Rossi. They’ve asked David Rossi back.”

 

* * *

 

**Morgan: They’re bringing ROSSI back Prentiss. Do you have any fucking idea what that means?!? The man is a demon HUNTER. They’re hunting Reid** **—they don’t think we can save him. The fuck didn’t you say anything? Where are you? We gotta stop this!**

**To Spencer: I'm notfired. I'm fixing drunk though. Fuck you Spencer Reid. duck you ams fuck your stupid hair. I hate you and your stupid pyjamasThose fixing toothbrushes. Why toothbrushes?why?why do you feel the need to be so WEIRD. Why can't I stop… you. Just ensuring about you. I need it tostop.**

**To Spencer: Imissy ou**

* * *

 

** UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE **

** FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION **

**Memorandum for Category 1**

**Confidential Memorandum Unclassified // For Official Use Only**

 

> **To:** All Employees
> 
> **Subject:** Guidelines for Conduct and Safety re:  FREEBOUND DEMONS
> 
> This is to provide advanced notice of the onset of our new policy regarding PERMITTED STATES OF DEMONS WITHIN THE BUREAU.
> 
> **Body:** All demon-kind field agents will be required to be of a familial-bound state beginning on the first working week of March, 2007. Free-bound demons will no longer be allowed as active field agents. All free-bound demons will be restricted to desk duties until such a time as they enter a registered familial contract. Questions or complaints must be directed to Sentience Relations.
> 
> Thank you for your cooperation.

 

* * *

 

She took two wobbling steps into her apartment that night, and Sergio swelled to twice his size, hissing furiously.

_“Someone has been here!”_ he roared. Before she could even react, he stopped and shrunk again. She could practically feel his confusion, even through a haze of alcohol. _“Oh. Oh. Emily…”_

She didn’t answer him because she’d seen it too. As she stepped towards the kitchen table, her heart in her throat and the room drawing in close around her, she caught the trace of his scent still in the air.  Bitter and rich all at once, and it made her sick to her stomach.

On the table, his battered copy of Solaris. And a note.

> _I’m alive. And I miss you too. S. R._


	8. Dark

David Rossi was everything Emily had expected him to be, and more. He was intimidating, especially once she noticed that sometimes when he was facing one way, his shadow was facing another. He was well spoken, which was no surprise after she’d spent the weekend alternating between pacing her house restlessly and reading his books. And he was dangerous. One look into his eyes told her that. Somehow, he managed to ooze a quiet, deadly confidence that even Gideon didn’t have.

But, then there were the things she hadn’t been expecting.

He was here to hunt Reid, of that they were under no illusions. The media was blowing up with reports of the ‘stolen’ agent and an awkward picture of Reid standing by JJ was plastered across news headlines and papers everywhere they turned. Even after three weeks, the furore was only slightly dying down. The Bureau was very invested in a quick end to the embarrassment it was turning out to be. And if that end meant that _tragically_ their lost agent was killed by the famous David Rossi… well, they could spin that positively. It made Emily sick to her stomach to think about, and she knew that Morgan wasn’t dealing well with it either judging from the masses of texts he bombarded her with daily.

She was expecting to hate Rossi. She was expecting smug arrogance; there was indeed smugness, and she knew there’d be arrogance once he settled in—she could see it in the proud tilt to his head—but there was also an irrepressible likability about him that even she grudgingly admitted.

“My desk?” he asked politely, nodding down at Reid’s chair, and she felt her hands clench into white-knuckled fists under the desk. Some of that sharp anger must have shown on her face, because his eyebrow lifted slightly. “Ah. This was his desk, wasn’t it? Dr. Reid’s?”

“Yes,” she answered shortly, looking back down at her paperwork. Her pant leg brushed against her skin, an invisible Sergio leaning companionably on her for support. He rarely left her side anymore, hovering like an overprotective hen over her eggs.

Rossi’s fingers tapped the desk once, twice, stilled. “I look forward to the day that I can step aside and allow him to retake it,” he said finally, and when she looked up in shock, he smiled warmly. “Until then, I’ll keep it warm for him, shall I?”

_“Interesting,”_ hummed Sergio in her mind.

Rossi sat down right as someone sneezed by him, his mouth motionless. “Bless you,” he said to no one in particular.

_“Very interesting,”_ Sergio added.

 

* * *

 

Gideon showed none of his usual distraction around Rossi. He watched him like a hawk, only responding when spoken to with concise, clipped answers, and they could all see that Rossi was thrown by this. Hotch was warmly welcoming, and the two spent an inordinate amount of time discussing past cases. She’d never heard Hotch talk so much to anyone, especially this new, aged Hotch that had been stalking about since Foyet had shown up all those months ago.

She hadn’t told any of them about Reid’s visit. Until she knew where they all stood, she didn’t plan to.

Morgan returned from suspension. If he’d had hackles as a human, they’d be permanently raised whenever Rossi was in the room. His open rejection of their new team member didn’t exactly smooth things over, especially with Garcia.

“I don’t like change,” she said once, only once, as JJ and Emily cornered her to try and wheedle her opinion. “I especially don’t like change when it’s my family that’s changing, and not in a good way, and even if he’s lovely, he’s not _Reid_.” Then she’d flickered away into a nearby electrical socket, but not before they’d all seen the tears.

She was right. He really wasn’t anything like Reid. And really, with Hotch, Gideon _and_ Rossi all butting-heads over cases now, they needed a Reid more than ever.

“No reported sightings of Hankel, no suspicious deaths even slightly matching his MO, nothing.” Morgan’s gaze didn’t lift from Rossi the entire time he spoke, darkly challenging. “They’ve just dropped off the face of the earth.”

Rossi didn’t seem to notice Morgan’s coldness. “Binding Dr. Reid would have taken a lot of energy. Hankel will want to kill, he’ll be craving it, but he’s likely still recovering. From his personnel file, Dr. Reid was ranked as a medium-high level demon when he was abducted. Binding him would have put even me on my ass for a month.”

“You’ve read his personnel file?” Gideon’s voice was sharp. “How? It’s redacted. That information is redacted.”

“Part of my conditions for returning,” Rossi replied calmly, turning to face the older profiler. “You know me, Jason. I don’t go unprepared into dangerous situations. I’m sure you’ve seen all the information in there; none of it would be new to you.”

Hotch looked uncomfortable. JJ shot Emily a nervous look, their gazes following the senior profilers like spectators at a tennis match. “Reid didn’t want that information made public,” he said quietly, clearly torn between keeping the peace and disagreeing with the level of information Rossi had been provided without out his knowledge or consent. “It wasn’t even shared with the team. The choice to open his file to you should—”

Rossi interrupted, and _now_ Emily could see the arrogance. “I think more than anything, what Dr. Reid wants right now is to come home,” he replied, “via any means possible, don’t you agree?”

“I think he’d prefer alive,” barked Gideon, and Emily sucked in a shocked breath, “and with some semblance of a private life to return to.”

They were dangerously close to drawing lines that may put them on the opposing side of their employers, and judging from the irritation on Rossi’s face, the opposing side of some of their team as well.

“I understand that my return comes at a very difficult time for you all,” Rossi snapped, standing. Emily glanced at Hotch, expecting him to say something, but the man remained silent. “I can assure you that I no more desire this to end in tragedy than any of you. But I can’t help you unless you _trust me on that_. I’m not here as some medieval demon hunter; I’m here as a profiler. Now. Let. Me. Profile.”

Heart hammering in her chest, Emily spoke up. “If we need to profile Reid to save him, then we do it.” Everyone stared at her. It was the first time she had sided with David Rossi.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t the last.

 

* * *

 

“Everything we know about Hankel.” Gideon slid a box onto the round table, all of their eyes locked on it. “Everything we know about Foyet.” He placed a file on top. “And… everything we have on Reid.”

The final box was the one Emily had seen Spencer’s belongings disappearing into that day, only weeks ago. Everyone’s eyes hovering on it, all uncertain. She could see them all imagining if it was their name on the side, their lives about to be pulled apart by their teammates. All except Gideon. He watched Rossi as Rossi watched no one, examining his fingers with a detached, uninterested expression. No one moved. Finally, Emily stood and yanked Spencer’s box towards her roughly, almost sliding it off the table with the force of her pull.

_“Easy,”_ Sergio soothed from his perch on the filing cabinet, but she ignored him, ripping the lid off and exposing the contents. The file on top she took for herself because she’d be damned if she was left in the dark on this one, and Gideon seemed inclined to leave her in the dark.

She snapped open the file. Scanned the information within. Ignored the fixed gaze of his employee photo looking up at her, the hidden smile teasing his lips even though the photographer would have instructed him to keep a straight face.

 

** FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION **

** UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE **

** Personnel Record **

 

> **Name:** Dr. Spencer William Reid, PhD
> 
> **DOB:** October 9, 1981
> 
> **Where Assigned:** ~~Quantico, Behavioural Analysis Unit~~ **CURRENTLY MIA**
> 
> **Official Position Title and Grade:** Supervisory Special Agent GS-10
> 
> **Known Family:** ~~Diana Reid, mother~~ Nil living
> 
> **ICE Contact:** Senior Supervisory Special Agent Jason Gideon
> 
> **Known Abilities:** Casting at first circle level, nil formal training. At this point in time, Dr. Reid’s abilities remain unknown due to resistance from both him and his superior agents in testing them further. It is unknown whether he has inherited the demonic nature of his sire or any of his abilities. It is highly recommended that Dr. Reid be required to take quarterly psych evaluations and magi physicals to ensure that the full aspects of his sire’s nature remain separate from him. It is highly recommended that further pressure be placed on both SSA Jason Gideon and SSA Aaron Hotchner to investigate Dr. Reid’s potential further. Due to Dr. Reid’s remarkable intellectual abilities that make him a valued member of the Bureau, this pressure should not endanger his position in the Bureau.
> 
> **Affinity:** Dark
> 
> **Species:** Demonic - **cacodemon**
> 
> **Subspecies:** Cambion
> 
> **Classification:** ~~S. W. REID – FREEBOUND DEMON 111.102.687 DAI CA CAM SR~~
> 
>             **AS OF 02/10/2007**
> 
>   1. **W. REID – THRALLBOUND DEMON 111.102.687 DAI CA CAM SR**
> 

> 
> **Rank:** May be subject to review WON – ~~medium-high rank. High possibility of increase.~~
> 
> **NOTE: AS OF 02/10/2007, S. W. REID IS CONSIDERED UNWILLINGLY HOSTILE. TARGET IS TO BE SUBDUED ON SIGHT, NON-AGGRESSIVELY IF POSSIBLE.** **LOSS OF LIFE EXPECTED IF AGENT IS NOT SUBDUED. HIGH-EXTREME RANK.**

 

“What’s a cambion?” Morgan asked into the quiet that followed Emily reading the file out loud.

No one was expecting the answer to come from where it did. “Child of an incubus,” Garcia answered promptly, not missing a beat. “What? Of course I knew. I know all the data stored here, I’m the Information Overlord of this place. It doesn’t change anything.”

“It changes our profile,” Morgan snapped hotly. “Why did he keep this from us? We’re supposed to be his friends!”

JJ stiffened, and suddenly Emily could see the situation spiralling wildly out of control as they turned against each other. “Why did he keep this from us? Wouldn’t you?” she asked, her brow furrowing. “Incubi are as dark as they come, they feed purely off humans… I didn’t think for a second he’s a… I mean, there’s a reason they’ve been extinct for what, thirteen years now? His father must have been one of the last.”

“He’s not an incubus, he’s the child of one,” Hotch corrected them, his face stern. “Yes, it changes the profile, but not in any way that Gideon and I haven’t already considered.”

“How far removed is the child from the sire, though?” JJ asked, and Emily could hear the hesitance in her voice. “Because incubi… well, they don’t…” She was wearing an expression that Emily couldn’t even begin to understand. “They die without sex,” she finished weakly. “And if Hankel knows that and… well, it changes how he’ll be treated. If they want him alive.”

Gideon answered, his voice tight. “He does… he does weaken when, ah… that is unavailable.” Everything became a little more distant after that. There was more talking. Morgan shouted.

Emily didn’t really listen. She was remembering Reid getting off the plane after their first case, the exhausted cast to his features. How sick he’d looked. _“I’m sorry. I have stuff I have to do tonight. Sorry, Em.”_ How much healthier he’d looked when he’d come to her home later that night…

_“If you are going to be ill, excuse yourself. You will be angry with yourself later if you allow yourself to appear weak in front of them.”_ Sergio. He jumped up on the table, startling JJ. No one else looked at him, until he spoke again. For the first time, he allowed them to hear him. _“Incubi are a reclusive race. I say are, because they are certainly not extinct, just not a conscious part of this world anymore. Your short-memories lead for little knowledge; most of what humans know of them is incorrect. They saw little reason to change that.”_ Emily couldn’t open her mouth to reassure her shocked looking teammates without losing control of her stomach, and she wasn’t going to think about _why_ her stomach was rebelling because that would bring with it thoughts she couldn’t face just yet. Her cat’s tail lashed irritably. _“They can live without sex. Not, comfortably, no, but they can survive. They feed from love and companionship just as much as they do physical intimacy. And Reid, as half of his sire, will suffer less for the lack of either.”_

“Yeah, because Hankel is positively lovable,” Morgan said, rubbing his eyes. He was standing, he’d stood at some point, his face glistening with a sheen of sweat despite the air-conditioning. “You said he’d suffer less. Not that he wouldn’t suffer.”

_“He’s trapped with a madman. I think suffering is expected. But yes, he will become malnourished. Despite your fears, Jennifer, rape as an outcome is improbable. There is little he’ll gain from forced intimacy, and Hankel will likely be aware of that.”_

“You said he can’t hurt me,” Emily said suddenly, the room snapping back into clear focus as the sick, crushing fear receded slightly. “Months ago, you said Reid couldn’t hurt me. Why?”

Sergio blinked slowly at her, pleased. Either because she’d remembered his words, which meant she’d listened to him, or because she wasn’t sitting there silent and frozen with horror anymore. _“Everything has a cost. Reid can survive on your affections for him, all of your affections, and those that he returns. The price of this is his loyalty. Even if he was inclined to injure one of you, for any reason up to and including coercion, he would find himself unable to. His own magic binds him to protect those he cares for.”_

Rossi laughed, and the noise was so sharp and unexpected that they all jumped. “So, this whole time you lot have been furious with me because you think I’m here as some glorified bounty hunter, and it turns out the only one in danger here is me anyway. Why the hell didn’t we know this?”

_“Incubi are secretive. It is unlikely Reid himself is all that aware. You, of everyone here, should understand secrecy, shadow mage.”_

“You’re an old soul, aren’t you?” Rossi said, shaking his head at Sergio. “You could have told us this from the beginning and saved everyone some heart-attacks.”

_“I am a cat. They are the same thing. It would have achieved little. You all may be safe, but that protection extends to few beyond this room. Reid is isolated.”_

“Can these protections be subverted in any way?” JJ, biting at her own nails. Emily contemplated smacking her hand away, but decided wisely it probably wasn’t the time.

Sergio hesitated. Emily could see reluctance in every line of his body. JJ wilted. They’d been relying on a firm ‘no.’

“Everything can be subverted,” Gideon said finally, reaching for the box of Reid’s belongings. “The real question is, does Hankel know how?”

The quiet reply from the cat was for her ears only. _“For your sake, little witch, I dearly hope that he does not. But I fear that hope may be in vain.”_ The fear returned, except this time she moved past it.

There was so much more at stake now, she couldn’t afford to panic.

 

* * *

 

Emily was pretty sure she’d lost more than just Spencer on that day. She’d never struggled with her magic before, but she was now. Simple spells evaded her, complex ones went wrong. Her runes were wonky, her casting worse than ever, and she was never as bad as she was when she trained with Gideon.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” she gasped eventually, stepping back with sweat plastering her dark hair to her forehead, running the back of her hand across her eyes. “It’s never done this before.”

“You need to focus,” Gideon said coolly, his own patience wearing thin. His desk smoked slightly from her last spell, the marks fading away even as she watched and leaving no trace of where they’d stained the wood. “You’re distracted. A distracted mage is a dead mage. Cast a light.” The simplest of spells. Pre-schoolers could do it. She tapped out the pattern and held her hand out, palm up. The steady light flared, a comforting warm globe hovering just above her skin, then blazed.

Burning pain shot up her arm as the light seared her skin. With a shriek, she pulled her hand away, the spells in the floors and walls lashing back at her as the light fell and almost ignited the carpet. “Fuck!”

“Interesting,” said a voice from the doorway. Emily spun around, still shaking the shock out of her hand, finding herself looking straight into Rossi’s eyes. He smirked, and her face flushed. Great. Now she’d failed elementary level magic in front of one of the most celebrated mages of the BAU. _Brilliant career move, Prentiss._ “What affinity are you?” Rossi asked unexpectedly, tilting his head slightly.

There was a soft noise of irritation behind her. “What does that have to do with anything, Dave?” Gideon responded shortly. “She’s obviously light affined, or I wouldn’t be training her in my office.”

“Yeah,” Rossi murmured, and his gaze hadn’t left hers. She felt her heart skip uncomfortably at that sharp gaze. “Because if she was dark, your protective spells would make it almost impossible for her to cast, wouldn’t they?”

Silence.

“I’m light affined,” Emily said finally, stomach twisting. Sweat dripped from her neck and slipped under the collar of her shirt. “I’m pretty sure if I was dark, someone probably would have noticed at some point.” She tried to smile, to lift the mood, but Rossi’s face barely changed from the mild amusement painted on his features.

“You’d think that, wouldn’t you?” he replied and walked off.

Staring at her hands, they’d never felt more unfamiliar. It was massively frightening, feeling the loss of something she’d relied her whole life on, and Rossi’s words scratched at her brain and refused to leave her alone. “Is it possible to change affinities?” she asked Gideon. “To go from light to dark?”

He shook his head, rubbing his temple with one hand. “No. Or if it is, I’ve never heard of it. You just need to focus, Prentiss. That’s all. We’ll pick this up tomorrow.” And he turned away, as remote as if he’d closed a door between them. If he was anyone else, anyone other than the fabled first circle mage, Jason Gideon, she’d have said he was struggling. But that seemed impossible, so she left him standing there and didn’t look back, lost in her own thoughts and worries and still haunted by the empty space in her bed.

 

* * *

 

There was a sighting of a man resembling Hankel in Idaho. By the time they got there, the trail had gone cold. A chemist was robbed in Georgia; every one of the man’s security runes screamed demon. It was a long shot, a ridiculous long shot, but among the stolen items was a truly frightening array of prescription narcotics.

“That’s more than one person could use,” Morgan commented, scanning the list. They were in the roundtable room again, the now memorized contents of Reid’s case around them.

They were getting nowhere.

“Oh god,” said JJ, and she avoided meeting Emily’s eyes. “You don’t think…?”

She had no idea how she was talking around the horror that was damming her throat, but she managed it. “It would make him easier to control. Especially if…” She coughed, trying to dislodge the lump before it could choke her, every word adding to it. “Especially if they cultivate an addiction. Yet another thing to tie him to them.” She wasn’t going to be sick. She wasn’t. She wasn’t going to think of him drugged and pliant, him shooting up, him high.

“Are we sure they’re together? They’re both loners. Neither would work well together.” JJ sounded understandably agitated.

“Ultram, naproxen. Those are Foyet’s meds. We’ve got narcotics, Hankel’s MO. They’re on the move and they’re together. Why? Foyet doesn’t do ‘teamwork’.”

“Reid. He’s too strong for Hankel to control on his own,” Hotch’s voice was as calm as ever, but there was a glitter of triumph in his eyes that set a spark of something almost like hope burning in Emily’s chest. “And Foyet needs the original necromancer who bound him, so they’re stuck together. Which makes it twice as likely one of them will slip up.”

Rossi crushed that hope before it had time to grow. “Yeah, so we’ve got two sadists in Reid’s head twenty-four seven? That doesn’t sound ‘good’ to me, Aaron. That sounds like twice the pressure for the kid to conform. I don’t know Reid personally, but I don’t think I’d blame him if he buckled under it.”

“So, we’ve got nothing.” Emily let her head drop into her hands. “We’re back at square one. He’s got us chasing our damn tails.”

Hotch huffed out a breath of air, shaking his head. “Calm down, Prentiss,” he scolded gently.

Anger flared. “It’s been months, Hotch! Months, and we haven’t seen him or even narrowed down where they’re keeping him. Why are we here if we can’t even save our friend?” Someone caught her arm and she realized at some point, she’d stood, hands clenched in her pockets and sides heaving. Hotch didn’t look shocked at her outburst, just tired.

The hand didn’t leave her arm. Rossi. She tried to shake it free, but he tugged her towards the door. “Come on,” he said quietly. “Let’s walk.” And just like that, the anger was gone. It was impossible to stay furious when Hotch looked like a puppy that had just been kicked, and while Rossi was looking at her like she was an exceptionally clever student that had just done an uncharacteristically stupid thing.

She slunk after him. They didn’t go far, pausing outside Hotch’s office and looking down on the quiet bustle of the bullpen. She stared at the TV screen mounted on one wall, the headlines scrolling across it. Nothing about Reid. He was old news now and, with Hankel keeping his head low, everyone had moved on. They hadn’t. But they knew it was only a matter of time before Strauss pulled them from the case.

They needed to find him before that happened.

“Why did they ask you back?” she asked finally. Rossi sighed, standing close enough to her that their shoulders brushed against one another as he leaned against the railing.

“To help. I promise you, Emily, not once was I instructed to take the kill shot if there were other options available.”

“Why do you care? You don’t even know him.”

Rossi snorted, and there was an echo of that dry noise from his shadow. She glared at it, contemplating stamping on it to see what happened. “That’s a dumbass question. Why are you here? Helping all these people you don’t even know.”

“I never retired.”

He nodded, slowly, his eyes dark and, for once, not glinting with humour. “Yes. I suppose it does seem odd. You know, I’ve had cases like this before, previously. They were my specialty.”

“I’ve read your books.” She had. And she knew how most of those cases ended.

Tragically.

“Never an agent, though.” His mouth thinned into a white line, some of the strain of the sleepless nights they’d all suffered through showing. “And I never killed an innocent.”

Her heart twisted. She parroted Reid’s words from earlier, almost unwillingly. “And what about when he’s not innocent anymore? What about then?”

His eyes flickered to her and held her gaze. “I’ll do my job. The same as you will. And… the same as Reid. You know how those cases ended. It was very, very rarely the actions of the agents that led to the bound demons’ deaths.” He touched her hand and walked away, shoulders stiff.

_“Of the nine percent that are saved, more than half commit suicide within a year of being released,”_ murmured the ghost of Spencer Reid in her memory.

“Shut up,” she muttered. “Even imaginary, you’re a smartass.”

Anderson looked at her strangely as he passed, but she was beyond caring.

 

* * *

 

There was a knock at her door. Emily was a pretty open-minded person, but she absolutely hadn’t been expecting Aaron Hotchner to be standing there. But he was. Dressed casually, _beyond casually_ , in a shirt that was worn by many washes and loose jeans to complete the ‘stay-at-home-dad’ look. She blinked a few times, just to make sure she hadn’t completely lost her mind. No matter how many times she blinked, he didn’t vanish.

“Hi,” she said belatedly, realizing she’d been standing there blinking at him for far too long. There was a laugh from inside her apartment that sounded like Sergio. She went to smile, and then remembered the blow-up she’d had yesterday and the smile vanished. Christ, he wasn’t going to fire her on a Saturday in a shirt that it looked like he’d owned since high school, was he?

“Sorry for the incursion,” he said quietly. “Are you busy?”

Seven simple words that found her sitting in her boss’s car, driving to god knows where with a bunch of boxes piled on his back seat. She didn’t ask where they were going because there was a definite downward turn to his mouth and his knuckles were white around the steering wheel. He didn’t offer the information, but that was fine. She had a suspicion.

When they pulled up outside the shabby apartment building and she stepped out the car, there was nothing about the place to hint to why they were there. She knew anyway.

“It’s only just over two months,” she said, her throat tightening around the words and skin feeling uncomfortably clammy. “It’s too soon to give up on him, Hotch.”

“We can keep paying his rent for him, but we’re out of town for long periods of time. The likelihood of a break-in or other disaster happening…” He trailed off and looked terribly uncertain. It wasn’t a good look on him, like he’d lost everything that made him Hotch when he’d taken his suit off. “Well, I’m sure he knows the statistics better than any of us. We’re not giving up. We’re ensuring he has belongings to come home to.”

She swallowed and it hurt. “Where are you taking them?”

“Long term storage. I organised it with Strauss, they’re footing the bill. Emily… if this is difficult for you, I understand. But, better than any of us, you’ll know what to do with his belongings. What should be stored and what should be… kept.” _What we should keep to remember him by_ , he was saying without actually saying it. The barest hint to suggest that maybe Hotch didn’t completely believe there was a coming back from this. It was also the closest that they’d managed to get to Hotch opening up to any of them, and as much as this hurt her, she knew that it would be destroying him. She remembered suddenly that she wasn’t the only one grieving an empty home.

That didn’t stop her from asking the question that had haunted her every night since that night.

“What did he say to you? At Marshal Parish, he said something to you.” She was horrified to realize she was almost crying. Instead of steeling herself to be surrounded by Spencer’s life and his memories, she was tearing up in the parking lot with her boss and asking him questions she had no right to ask of him.

Hotch slid the boxes to the ground and stepped around them, placing a hand on her shoulder. He didn’t try to hug her. She was thankful for that. His words were quiet and between them alone. “This isn’t your fault.”

 

* * *

 

Morgan and Garcia arrived together, and that wasn’t a shock. Garcia bringing cupcakes wasn’t a shock either. Neither was her immediately bursting into tears as Spencer’s stuff slowly made its way into boxes. They’d moved quickly at first, but as more and more of their co-worker’s life unfolded around them, they’d slowed. The weight of his life lay heavily on their shoulders, Hotch’s especially, and when Emily caught him staring at a notebook filled with Reid’s tight, scrawled handwriting, she’d known they needed a break.

JJ was next to show up, and she was a breath of fresh air, keeping up a steady babble as they worked. If sometimes she stopped and rubbed a hand against her eyes or vanished and returned looking pale and blotchy, they all pretended it was the dust. They talked about him and memories of him, and of Elle, the woman that Emily had replaced. They talked about cases and chopsticks and Garcia cried again over a half-knitted scarf that she unearthed from a basket tucked neatly under a cupboard. Emily tried to imagine Spencer knitting and couldn’t.

There was one more knock on the door, and she’d thought it would be Gideon. They all had. Gideon’s presence was already tangible in the apartment, in Reid’s notes and his books and in the visible impact Gideon had had on the man.

But it wasn’t.

Rossi was silent as he entered, and the conversation ground to a halt. Morgan’s face darkened. Garcia sniffed. JJ straightened and looked to Hotch for a cue on how to react.

“I have a fairly sizable basement that my ex-wife did me the courtesy of emptying when she left,” Rossi said finally. “His books and papers would be much safer there rather than in a storage container. Less rats, for one thing. And if any of you would like, they would be much easier to access there.” It was an act of friendship. An open palm extended to them saying, _‘I’m here in peace. This is my offering to you. An olive branch.’_

“Thank you,” JJ said suddenly, standing and walking over to him in two great steps. Emily glanced at Hotch, but he was examining the bookcase again, leaving them to make the choice. “This means more than you could know.”

And she hugged him.

“Appreciate it,” Morgan grunted, looking at his shoes.

Garcia just sniffled. “Cupcake?” she asked, holding the box out to him. He took one with a wry smile, sniffing it cautiously.

Emily just nodded.

 

* * *

 

She left them clearing his kitchen and found her way to his so far untouched bedroom. The air hung heavily, stiff and suffocating. She ran her hand over his bedside cupboard, around the spare pair of glasses and a book with a bookmark she’d bet money he’d never used sitting on top. Her fingers came away dusty, gritty.

It was stupid. It was stupid, and dangerous with her team moving outside the room and, most of all, it was disgustingly sentimental. But she slipped onto the bed anyway, curling on top of the blankets for just a moment in the position he had always favoured when staying at her home. The pillow smelled like dust and _him_. She caught her breath, almost unable to inhale for fear of the pain that scent would bring, clogging her throat and blurring her eyes.

“How long?” someone asked, shattering the moment. She bolted upright. Rossi stood in the doorway, his eyes soft. He stepped in, closing the door and looking around curiously.

“What?” she said dumbly, mind going blank for a second before kicking back into gear. _Shit. Busted._ Rossi was probably the only one who hadn’t known about her and Reid, but she really wished it could have stayed that way.

“How long were you seeing him for?”

She thought of lying, but what was the point? At this point, who was she even protecting? “Four months. Sort of.” It sounded like such a paltry amount when put like that.

Rossi was quiet for a long moment. “So, six months? I’m given to understand that you were together when he was abducted. He is still alive, you know. And I can assure you, he very likely still cares for you a great deal. That didn’t end the day he was taken.”

This was ridiculous. Was she getting relationship advice about her missing demon boyfriend from _David Rossi_? The only way this could be weirder was if Hotch or Gideon stuck their heads in and added their two cents. “You talk like you know him,” she said instead, standing and smoothing the covers of the bed back down. Spencer had made his bed that morning. He’d made his bed, tucked in the sheets, folded his pyjamas and put them at the end of the bed ready to slip back into. Ready to come home to. He’d never planned on not coming home. He’d never planned on leaving her.

Holy fuck, that hurt like it was fresh again, a rush of raw pain that she thought she’d moved past. She was just glad the pyjamas on the bed were demure blue flannel, and not the fucking toothbrushes. She was pretty sure that would have broken her.

“Well, not as much as you, obviously. But I have some familiarity of him. I am a profiler.” Rossi was watching her with his hawk-eyes, not missing a beat.

“And what, you got all that from profiling his empty apartment? Or from profiling me?” she asked hotly, crossing her arms as a shield against that gaze. The dust was making her eyes run and her nose itch, not a great combination for remaining composed and dignified.

He shrugged. “He’s a neat-freak. There’s not a thing out of place in the majority of the apartment, except for his work desk which is a mess because it’s where he lets his mind loose. Everything else has its place. When he’s done with something, he puts it back straight away.”

“Good job,” she said sarcastically, moving past him to the door. “You’ve worked out that he’s anal retentive. Like that wasn’t obvious as soon as we found his sock-index.”

“Everything in its place, Em, and everything has a place. Everything.” His use of her pet name stalled her. She turned, reluctantly, and he was standing next to the bed, looking down on the book. “He’s also sentimental. He has reminders of those he cares about all over his home. He writes letters to his deceased mother and fills them with memories of his team. Of you.”

“You had no right to read them,” she said around a tongue that was suddenly clumsy.

Rossi didn’t falter. “He keeps the things he loves close, and the people he loves even closer. Why would a man who cannot forget keep so many mementos? Because he’s scared of forgetting or because he can’t bear to be without those things?”

“Stop.” Her voice had turned into a shadow, weak and faint.

He picked up the book. “And why would a man who can read a book this small in an instant keep it by his bed?” _William Wordsworth Collected Works_ was embossed in gold across the front, the corners turned from multiple readings. When he relaxed his hand, the book fell open to a page easily. Something fluttered out, drifting to the ground. She watched it like a hare watches a hawk, frozen as though her stillness could hide her from its gaze. Rossi ignored her, stooping and picking it up with a careful hand. “Though nothing can bring back the hour: Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower,” he read softly, tucking it back into the book and handing it to her. “We will grieve not, rather find; strength in what remains behind.”

The photo of her was old, pre-Doyle, and there was a wildness to her face and bearing that she hadn’t shown in years, a melancholy cast to her shoulders and expression that set a beat of longing drumming in her heart. This Emily had no idea what life had in store for her yet, the endless possibilities promised to her narrowing and leading her down the path to Lauren Reynolds and the BAU and finding love in the last place she’d expected.

And losing it.

Later that day, Garcia found a box of photos hidden in a drawer, and Emily shuffled through it looking for something in particular. Among the dozens of pictures of a child Spencer being held by his mother, his mother alone, other people she didn’t know and even a few of the BAU, she found what she was looking for. It wasn’t so long ago. He must have been twenty, maybe twenty-two at the most. He wasn’t looking at the camera but past it, and he was smiling. She wondered what he was looking at.

She tucked that photo in the book of poetry back-to-back with hers, and when she went home that night she slid it under the pillow on his side of the bed like a promise.

 

* * *

 

“Prentiss, focus.” For what felt like the thousandth time that day, his magic struck her and _hurt_. Her shields failed instantly. If she kept this up, forget making second circle. They’d have her out of the fucking field—she was a liability.  He pulled back, recasted.

She reached for the familiar thread of her magic, and it slipped helplessly from her fingers, like trying to hold onto smoke. “Shit,” she snarled, right as his spell hit her again. “Ow, fuck!” The spell receded and Gideon hissed in frustration. She could see him simmering with irritation at her, and it fed her temper, already on a short fuse. “This isn’t working, we need to change what we’re doing,” she said, trying to reel back her magic and feeling it spark and fizzle, evading her. “Try another approach.”

“You need to—” he started, but she cut him off.

“I’m not Reid,” she said quietly, but her voice was cold and unfamiliar even to her. The anger she was barely restraining was a physical taste in her mouth, poisoning her words. “You’ve been hitting me with everything you’ve got and even if my magic was working, I wouldn’t stand a chance. Stop taking it out on me because _he’s not here._ ” He stared at her, his face shocked, and she’d never seen that expression on him before and she’d be perfectly happy to never have to see it again. “I’m not him,” she repeated, quieter, because, for the first time, Gideon looked old and tired, and it occurred to her that she wasn’t the only one who missed him, even if Gideon sometimes seemed above such petty human emotions such as friendship and love. “And I can’t replace him. I’m done. I’m sorry.”

She walked out. Went to her desk and slid a file out from her inbox, pressing her pen to the page and desperately pretended to be working hard even though her racing thoughts and the spark of adrenaline rushing through her veins still wouldn’t allow her to concentrate. Screw second circle, what did it matter anyway? She was more than just her magic.

_“You were harsh,”_ Sergio commented gently from somewhere near her ear. She couldn’t see him, but his breath tickled her ear. Of course, that didn’t mean he was anywhere near her, knowing him. _“You don’t want to lose his regard, Emily. He is a powerful ally.”_

_“Lose his regard?”_ she thought back with a faint note of hysteria in her mind-voice. _“Fuck, Sergio. I don’t even know if I’ve lost myself, let alone him. I’m losing something, that’s for sure.”_ Or, maybe, she’d already lost it, and they were only just noticing now.

 

* * *

 

Every morning when she woke up, it was for a moment as though the past two months hadn’t happened. Without fail, she’d forget he was gone and for a moment, just a moment, it was like having him back. Then she’d open her eyes and lose him all over again. Even now when she’d almost been without him longer than she’d been with him, it still hadn’t faded.

That morning in particular she’d woken and smiled, because she could smell a trace of his scent on the sheets despite the fact that she’d washed them multiple times since he’d been gone. Then she’d realized that she actually could smell a trace of him, and she’d opened her eyes as the cautious waiting period of the last two months since that fateful night at Hankel’s came to an abrupt end.

The book Foyet had taken sat on the pillow next to her, and she had no idea how Reid had gotten in without waking her or Sergio, but he had and it was _terrifying_. Because this wasn’t like Solaris. This wasn’t a memento of him; him reaching out and saying, _‘I’m still here’_ to stop her from grieving for him. He may have put the book there, but this wasn’t his message.

_Thanks for the loan, Emily darling,_ said the note scratched into the cover with a cheap pen in Spencer’s handwriting. _I’ve never been happier, but I bet Aaron wishes he’d just taken the deal. With love, Spencer. : ) PS I’ll be seeing you soon, I have to pay my regards to an old friend first. Kiss kiss._

Later that day, the book sat on the round table surrounded by the other missing items and the notes they bore. They were all roughly the same, except Hotch’s. He placed his down with a hand that shook, and even Rossi balked at it.

_You know how you were supposed to protect me? Protect all those people? You failed, Aaron. And every moment of every day, I pay for that mistake. Shame on you_ — _when will you take responsibility for your own actions instead of letting your team take the fall? With great disgust, Spencer R. PS Jack’s growing up into a real cutie. I love his new haircut._

“He didn’t write them,” Morgan said immediately. “They don’t even sound like him.”

Emily shook her head. “Yes, he did. He just didn’t word them. This is Foyet. It’s been Foyet all along. And we’re running out of time.”

Rossi picked up her book and paged through it, closing it with a snap and a reluctant expression on his face. “Sorry, Prentiss. But it’s been two months. We knew he couldn’t hold out forever. We’re out of time… and so is he. Whatever he was, he’s theirs now.”

“What happens now?” Garcia asked into the silence that followed that ominous announcement, blinking furiously behind her brightly coloured lenses.

_“Nothing good…”_ Sergio responded sadly.


	9. Broken

She got home from work heartsick and drained and with the vague sense that nothing was going right anymore. There was nothing, _nothing_ , that could save this day from being a complete and absolute misery. Ever since Rossi’s ominous announcement, every day had started to take a numb sort of sadness to it. It wasn’t just her. Smiles had grown rare around the BAU.

She moved on autopilot. Mail and keys onto the cupboard. Kick shoes off. Coat on the rack.

Gideon would have shot her if he’d seen how lax she was about her surroundings.

“You should be more observant,” said a quiet, painfully familiar voice from the couch. “I could have been anyone.”

She stopped. Everything stopped. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t breathe. And she certainly couldn’t turn around, not with the possibility of her heart being ripped out of her chest if she was wrong about who it was. Or if she was right. Emily wasn’t entirely sure which would be worse. But, she had to look eventually, because if she didn’t her pulse was going to stop from the tension of it.

He was curled up on the couch with his knees to his chest and his chin resting on them, watching her with eyes that had bypassed ‘sad’ and gone straight on to ‘tormented.’ Even from here, even with the way he was drawn into himself, she could see that he’d lost weight, far too much of it, his skin fragile and stretched over the framework of bones that she’d previously incorrectly assumed were already as visible as it was possible to get.

“You cut your hair,” she said finally, because she didn’t know what else to say and for some reason the sight of his hair shorn so short and sticking up in jagged, unwashed clumps was hurting her like nothing else had. Not the skinniness of him, not the fear and misery in his expression, or the cruel gold bands she could see winding up his arms. His fucking hair was what she’d focused on.

“I didn’t,” he answered, and closed his eyes, head drooping. He wasn’t wearing his glamour; the points of his ears and the small horns she’d felt but not seen were finally visible. She doubted he’d dropped it on purpose. He was exhausted. He didn’t look like himself. He was dirty and sick and barely a man anymore. He was completely and utterly broken in a way she hadn’t thought was possible.

But he was _alive_.

“Spencer,” she breathed, and shuddered with the realization that he was five steps away. Four. Three. He caught her as she stumbled and he smelled wrong but, underneath that, she could still smell _him_. She held him close and counted every bone, every beat of his heart, and tried to remember how to let go.

Sergio got home before she remembered. Reid had gone quiet against her, stopped pulling away, and his breathing had evened out. It should have been funny, him falling asleep curled into her lap like a child, but it wasn’t. His head lolled back against her stomach, one of his hands wrapped around hers, and he was out so fast and so deep she thought that this might be the first time he’d let himself sleep in a long time.

Even asleep, his face lost none of the pain that was traced indelibly in the lines of it.

She turned his palm over, looking for the almost-invisible lines of his credentials that should still be there, and found a ridged mass of scarring instead. They’d burned it off. They’d burned him. She could see where they’d pressed his hand to the surface, wrapped his fingers over it, where he’d struggled. She traced her finger over it, feeling sick.

_“You should call your team.”_ Sergio appeared on the end of the couch, leaving an inch of space between him and Reid’s legs, sniffing at his pants. _“Foyet could be nearby.”_

“I don’t think he is,” Emily replied quietly, running the fingers of her free hand through the unevenly cropped hair. It was oily, leaving traces on her hand, but she was beyond caring at this point. Reid twitched away slightly at the touch, eyelids flickering. “Serge… what will they do if I call them? What will Rossi do?”

_“Help him. There must be something they can do. He is unwell.”_

Brushing her hand against his forehead, she could feel the heat radiating off of him. “How sick is he?” she asked her cat, not sure if she wanted the answer. Sergio was silent, eyes tracking up and down the thin form in her arms, tail oddly still.

_“Were this any other situation, I would say only mildly. Nothing a day in bed couldn’t fix.”_

“But…”

_“I can’t feel his magic it’s so drained. And far too skinny. He’s running on reserves he doesn’t have. Emily, I understand you’re worried about what the Bureau may do, especially since they will be unable to unbind him without Hankel, but you need to consider the repercussions of letting him leave here freely.”_

“How would you stop me?” Reid mumbled into her thigh, his voice cracked. He opened his eyes, and Emily felt her own water in sympathy at the glazed, bleary shine to them. “Neither of you are strong enough to stop me…”

_“You are sick.”_

“M’ fine.” His face slackened, exhaustion almost winning, dry lips slipping open slightly.

“I won’t call them,” Emily said, making up her mind “if you come to bed with me.”

Even like this, his eyebrow twitched upwards and his mouth quirked in a fractured smile. “Hardly an appropriate time.”

She pulled her knee up, jabbing it into his belly and he whined. “Idiot. To sleep. Will they notice if you’re gone for a few hours to sleep? You need rest.” _You need a lot more than just rest_. _But that’s all I can offer you at this point._

There was the barest hint of movement as he shook his head. When he spoke, his voice slurred slightly, even with the short, concise sentences he spoke in. “They won’t notice. Supposed to be following you anyway. Loophole. Instructions not clear enough. Never said I couldn’t watch you from inside.”

“Alright,” she said, slipping out from under him and heaving him up. He helped, barely. It was an uneasy realization when she noticed that she didn’t actually _need_ him to help. She could almost lift him unaided, even with his wings an awkward weight on his back. “Come on. Christ, you need a shower.”

“Can’t,” he replied, letting his face sink onto her shoulder and breathing in slightly deeper, her hair in his face. She felt his heart skip unevenly in his chest. “Can’t. Too vulnerable like that.”

A rumbling growl that wasn’t hers sounded by her feet. Sergio spoke to her alone. _“I look forward to tasting Hankel’s liver.”_ He vanished, leaving an air of furious cat-anger that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. She could still hear him even though he’d left the room. _“Don’t give him anything for the fever. He stinks of narcotics. I still think you should call someone.”_

“I promised,” she whispered in answer, lowering Reid onto the bed and tugging the blanket out from underneath his dead weight. He didn’t even twitch as she tugged his shoes off and covered him back over, before undressing and sliding in next to him with just her shirt and underwear, and curling around him like smoke.

The barest sliver of a hazel eye showed under his swollen lids as Reid looked at her. “You’re a bed hog,” she scolded him, hugging him possessively with her ass almost hanging off the bed. She wasn’t normally a cuddler; neither of them were. They liked their space. But just today, just right now, she needed the touch of him to remind her that he was real.

“I love you,” he responded quietly, and it hurt so much she couldn’t talk through it. By the time the pain had receded, he was asleep.

“Please don’t leave me again,” she whispered to him, safe in the knowledge that he couldn’t hear her asking the impossible and vividly aware that she was horribly close to begging.

 

* * *

 

She woke up once to him pressing his lips against hers and kissing her with the breathless kind of hunger possessed by a starving man offered something delicious. She could feel his lips moving against hers, saying something, but she deliberately didn’t focus on the words. If this was the only time he could be vulnerable, then let him be so.

When she woke up again, the room was dark and she was alone.

For a long, tangible moment, it was like losing him all over again, and she pressed a hand against her gut to try and quell the uneasiness. She’d known intellectually that he wasn’t back for good, it hadn’t been half obvious. But she’d… some part of her had hoped.

“Prentiss.”

The voice was clipped and formal, and she almost jumped out of her skin, spinning around to face the door. Reid stood there, hair damp and spiky, and he looked better. Still painfully skinny and drawn, but no longer on the verge of collapse. His glamour was back in place as well, the wings and horns hidden and leaving him human. The eyes that watched her were clear and sharp, no trace of the fever-bright sheen to them. Slipping out the bed, she padded over to him and wrapped her arms around him, engulfed by the smell of her soap and shampoo and the fabric cleaner she favoured on the clothes he wore. He must have found them in her wardrobe, the ones she couldn’t bear to box up and pack away. He was stiff and unyielding in her arms, his own hanging limply by his side. It was like hugging a store mannequin.

“Don’t do this,” she snapped, tightening her grip on him before he could do exactly what he was planning to and slip away like he was never there. “Don’t shut yourself off. We can do this. We’ve proven tonight that we can do this, you need this.”

He shook his head, slowly, not making eye contact with her. “I need you safe. I shouldn’t have come here… I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“Bullshit,” she said, resisting the urge to shake him. She slipped her hands onto his arms, the slick gold of the binding up his arms tingling against her fingers. “That’s the clearest you’ve been thinking in months. You’ve been watching us? Why didn’t you come to us? Jesus, Reid, we fucking love you, we’d do anything to help you. Hotch…” She trailed off, remembering the haunted cast to their boss’s features, his dark misery when they’d packed up Spencer’s belongings.

He crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut into her grasp, folding his lanky form until his head thumped onto her shoulder. “Because I’m not strong enough for that,” he said, but his voice lacked any bite. He just sounded… empty. “If I came back to you, to any of you, I didn’t know if I could leave again. And I can’t, I can’t walk away again. I watched you _grieve_.”

“Spence…”

He jerked upright, pressing his mouth to hers in a pale imitation of a kiss, his eyes still open. She didn’t even have time to react as the gold under her arms burned, except to wrench her hands away in shock. “I have to go. I have to. Em, Foyet has plans. I can’t tell you, he won’t let me, but… be careful.” He stepped back, away from her, and she stood and did nothing but watch him because to do anything else felt too much like saying goodbye. His last words weren’t of love or farewell or empty promises. They were a confession. “I’m so tired of fighting, Em.”

Then he was gone and the air smelled faintly of ozone and soap.

Something butted against her leg. She looked down into Sergio’s grey-green eyes, wide with concern. _“He lasted longer than they believed he would. He may yet prove us wrong again. Don’t give up on him.”_

She looked at the bed, something different about it catching her eye. Her pillow was oddly placed at a strange angle. Almost purposefully placed. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, her mouth twitching up into a smile. He was here and alive and she remembered how his heart beat. That was more than she’d expected. “Like fuck I’m giving up on him now.”

Under the pillow lay the book of poetry, now held open by two envelopes shoved inside. One with her name, unsealed. She put it aside, not ready to open it just yet.

The other simply labelled, _Gideon_.

 

* * *

 

Gideon didn’t say anything when he unsealed the envelope and scanned the contents, but his eyes widened slightly. They all watched him as he folded the paper back up carefully and slipped it back into the envelope, placing both precisely on the table and lining the corner against the edge of the wood. Stalling.

“Gideon?” Hotch asked finally, pacing in front of the plasma. Emily caught Morgan’s eyes. The man looked torn between hope and desperation, dearly hoping that Reid had just handed them all the key to his salvation in the form of the carefully labelled missive.

“It’s a bible verse,” Gideon said finally, heavily.

“What?” Morgan yelped, his eyes snapping around to stare accusingly at Gideon. “Wait, no. It can’t be. Or it’s a hidden message—a clue, like he did in Hankel’s shack. Maybe it’s saying where he is. Yeah, that has to be it!”

“Morgan’s right, surely Reid’s left some kind of…” Hotch trailed off, looking up as Rossi walked in.

“Am I interrupting something?” Rossi asked, stopping shortly as they all turned to look at him. Except Gideon.

Gideon still looked down at the envelope, face expressionless. “The arrogance of your heart has deceived you, O you who live in the clefts of the rock, who occupy the height of the hill. Though you make your nest as high as an eagle's, I will bring you down from there," he said in a monotone. Morgan’s face clouded with confusion, before his eyes widened slightly.

Rossi leaned back against the wall. “Ah. I see I have missed something. That’s certainly… threatening.”

Gideon’s head snapped up, and he narrowed his eyes at the other profiler. “Threatening? No, I don’t think so. If it was a threat, it would almost certainly have more of a… Foyet flavour to it. This is entirely Reid, don’t you think?”

There was silence as they all processed that. Emily stared at JJ, trying to work through the muddle of her own thoughts. By the way JJ’s face cleared, they came to the same conclusion at once. “It’s a warning,” Emily said, JJ nodding along. “Not a threat. He’s warning you that Foyet is… oh.”

“Coming after me first,” Gideon finished, leaning back in his chair and smiling coldly. “Good. I believe we have business together that is long overdue.”

 

* * *

 

“Prentiss.” Rossi had excused himself as soon as Emily had left the roundtable room, and even a desperate detour into the women’s bathroom hadn’t discouraged him from following her.

She turned on him and crossed her arms, shifting her expression into a subtle disapproval she’d learned from Sergio. “You’re like a goddamn terrier. You just don’t give up, do you?”

He smirked. His shadow made a gesture under his feet that she didn’t quite catch, even when she glanced down at it. As soon as her gaze landed on it, it settled into an innocent shadow, copying Rossi’s movements perfectly. “I can smell a guilty conscience a mile away. Funny, throughout that little breakthrough we had back there, I don’t believe anyone mentioned just how that letter came into Gideon’s possession. Do you?”

“No idea,” she lied flatly, her hammering heart giving her away. It wasn’t even a good lie. She was slipping.

He hesitated, and she could see him choosing his words carefully. “Prentiss, you know… I understand how hard this can be. How desperately you want the best outcome, like we all do. But I really must recommend you take a step back and view it objectively. What would the Bureau say if they knew you were… entertaining… the person they’ve poured thousands of man-hours into retrieving. Your career would be over.”

“Fuck my career,” she responded quietly. “You didn’t see him, Rossi. He was… still himself. Under it all, he’s still there. You were wrong.”

His mouth quirked down. “No I wasn’t. I never said he’d stop being himself. I said he belonged to them, and he does. Don’t forget that. You should change your locks. You can retract your invitation. I can help you.”

She became suddenly aware of points of pain in her hands, her nails cutting into her palms and leaving half-moon shapes she’d pick obsessively at later. “No. If he comes to me, I won’t turn him away. That would be signing his death warrant, and I won’t do it. And I can assure you, if the Bureau finds out, we’ll all know who went to them.” At some point, she’d become the kind of person to issue veiled threats to a man thirty years her senior and outranking her by a league. She wasn’t even that surprised; she’d always been terrible at being subordinate.

“I don’t intend upon telling anyone,” Rossi replied, closing his eyes for a moment. “But you’re playing with fire. If you won’t let me change the locks, at the very least… you’re a rune mage. Put one within reach in your home that will call me if you need me.”

“Fine,” she said after a beat, allowing him that concession. She’d never use it. She already knew that.

He nodded and walked away, his shadow watching her as he went.

 

* * *

 

“Again, Emily?” JJ tried to keep the incredulous tone out of her voice when she saw Emily walking towards them through the squad room looking sheepish, but she didn’t quite manage it. “How many is that now? Four?”

Emily did her best Sergio glare. She was doing that a lot these days. “Two. Christ, JJ, it’s been two.”

Morgan sniggered, tilting his chair back and grinning at her. “Don’t lash out at JJ because you can’t keep a tutor. What the heck do you do to them? This one didn’t even last a week.”

“I didn’t do anything to this one,” Emily said honestly, slumping in her seat and considering a career change. If she didn’t pick up on her magic soon, she wouldn’t have a damn choice. “It was all Sergio. He has opinions. _Loud_ opinions.”

_“She’s an idiot. She would have crippled your magic if you followed her advice. I merely pointed out her idiocy.”_ Sergio appeared on her keyboard, paws pressing every inconvenient button possible as his tail lashed. Emily stared glumly at the windows flashing up on the screen, knowing that Garcia would soon appear and shout at them both for disrespecting technology.

“I can speak to Gideon.” Hotch’s voice floated down to them, and Emily almost fell out of her chair with shock, turning and flushing with embarrassment when she found her boss looking down on them. He looked… sympathetic. No doubt he’d just received the phone call from the furious mage Sergio had insulted. Hell hath no fury like a mage with a sore ego. She shook her head. The last thing she needed was Gideon taking her back out of some sort of misplaced pity. She’d work through this on her own. She’d take classes if she had to. It was clearly psychosomatic, her brain working against her.

Maybe Reid if she saw him again…

“I can do it.” The thump of a bag hitting the desk opposite hers announced Rossi’s arrival. “It’s been a long time since I got to knock a young mage into shape. It’ll be fun.” He grinned and Emily groaned. Sergio purred.

“You’re a dark mage, Dave,” Hotch pointed out. “That’s going to make things difficult.”

“Ah well,” Rossi responded cheerfully, pulling a muffin out of the battered bag and tearing a chunk off for Sergio. “I do love a challenge.”

Emily began to consider that maybe she was in over her head.

 

* * *

 

She’d never been to Gideon’s apartment before.

She’d imagined it would be filled with books, with paintings of birds. Maybe even model trains; he did seem the type. And so far, it had all those things.

It was also painted with blood.

“They have six witnesses who saw Gideon running down the street covered in blood and holding a gun,” Morgan murmured as Emily stepped up beside him, both of them looking through the bedroom door at the splayed body of a woman on Gideon’s bed. What had once been a woman.

What was a woman no longer. What was left of her… Emily closed her eyes for a moment, to spare her brain the image for just a few seconds more. “They think Gideon did this?”

Hotch answered, stepping out of the room with his face chalk-white: “No. They think Reid did.”

 

* * *

 

“His scent is all over the room. Sarah died with her throat torn out. There are indications of sexual assault, but no DNA. That also points to demon. The entire place stinks of weather magic. Tell me again how we’re going to prove it wasn’t him?” Morgan paced as he spoke, the atmosphere in the room suffocating with the door closed tightly. They were all crammed in Hotch’s office, Strauss’ eyes on them and the threat of her fury if she caught them working this case.

“It wasn’t him,” Emily said firmly, seeing JJ nod along. “Christ, Morgan, you think he went from being Reid to assaulting and eviscerating a woman in one fell swoop? There’s no hesitation marks on the body, every strike was precise. That’s not a first-time killer.”

“Incubi don’t feed on blood,” Rossi pointed out, rubbing the fingers of one hand together thoughtfully. “Foyet overplayed his first hand. Tearing out her throat, that was showy and shocking, and completely shattered the illusion he was going for. Indications of sexual assault? If we believe for an instant that that was Reid, she wouldn’t have fought him. They’re basing that on that she struggled. His entire species’ survival is based around being impossible for humans to resist; there wouldn’t _be_ signs of a struggle from it.”

“Why would Foyet bother staging it if he could order Reid to just do it?” JJ asked the question, even though Emily could tell she already knew the answer by the sadly triumphant look on her face.

“Because he’s still fighting,” Emily answered, locking her gaze accusingly onto Rossi’s. “He was there, we know this. That fucker probably made him watch. But he didn’t do this.”

“Fantastic,” Morgan said softly. “Now we gotta tell Gideon that before he finds him.”

“Or before Foyet escalates this even more,” Hotch added. “He’s put these events into motion now—he’s not going to fade away into the shadows without finishing what he’s started. He’s going to have more victims, and he’s going to put Reid between us and them. We need to be ready for that.”

Emily had a horrible feeling this case was going to end with them standing over the body of at least one person she cared about. It was the kind of case that brought with it that possibility. The real question was; who would be left standing when the dust cleared? Gideon?

Or Reid?

 

* * *

 

“Hotch, nothing could have stopped this.” Emily stared at her boss’s shoulders, the way they’d slumped, the empty look back on his face.

He was breaking. The body of Rebecca Bryant lay in front of them and they couldn’t have stopped it. But that didn’t mean Hotch wasn’t going to blame himself.

The air reeked of ozone and blood, and she half expected to turn and find Reid standing behind her, watching the scene with his hazel eyes both keenly assessing the information it presented them while still managing to convey his sadness at a life lost. Instead, Morgan stood there, and his face said nothing.

“This all started with me,” Hotch snapped, turning and shouldering his way past. Walking out. Rossi followed, his expression grim.

“This all started with Foyet,” Emily corrected softly, but he was already gone.

 

* * *

 

Foyet took a child. Emily looked at the picture of Tracey Belle smiling cheerfully at the camera and silently prayed that Reid would protect her. He’d do anything to protect her, anything.

She hoped it was enough.

The phone rang while they were trying desperately to narrow down where he would take her and it was Garcia, her voice panicked. Hotch had sent her off somewhere, telling none of them where. They knew she was with Gideon. Or had been with Gideon. “Foyet made Tracey call, she told him where to find her. It’s a trap, Hotch, it’s a trap to get Gideon on his own, I know it. You have to go.”

Hotch remained calm. “Did you record it?”

The voice that came from the phone directly after was young and painfully scared. _“Please, Mr. Gideon, you saved me once.”_

_“I remember. Of course, I remember you. How could I forget you?”_ Gideon, soothing. Emily’s heart twisted at his voice. She had her problems with the man, hadn’t ever thought to tell him that he was an inspiration to her, hadn’t even realized until she heard him calming a frightened child even though he was grieving and alone and hunted. Now she might not ever get that chance.

_“The man said you’d help me. He said you’d come for me and take me to mommy.”_

_“Which man, hon? What man are you with?”_

_“I don’t like him. He says nice things, but then he holds me so tight it hurts, and he won’t let me go home.”_

_“Reid? Spencer? If you’re there, you need to help us. Help us save her, please. Please.”_

Every single one of them was holding their breath waiting for the reply. When it came, none of them were surprised.

_“We chose the train station because we know how much you love trains,”_ Spencer said dully, and Morgan closed his eyes. _“We saw the toys in your apartment. Better hurry, Jason. What are the chances of her cheating death twice?”_

The call cut off.

“Gideon has a head start on us,” Rossi said firmly, standing and moving towards the door. “We’d better get moving if we want to beat him.”

“In what capacity are we going there, Dave?” Hotch asked, his eyes dark. “As agents, or as executioners?”

Rossi didn’t answer.

 

* * *

 

There was no sign of Gideon or Foyet at the station, packed with civilians. There was no sign of Tracey either. Or of Reid.

Emily moved behind Rossi, eyes scanning the crowd and Sergio at her feet. She needed his senses, needed to be the first to find him. So much could go wrong here, there was so much to lose. She was calm though. She knew this, knew her job. Fear could come later.

She ended up being the third to see him. Rossi was first, followed by Sergio. His warning was seconds after Rossi swung his gun up, aimed squarely at Reid’s unprotected heart.

Emily’s stopped beating.

Reid blinked slowly, Tracey limp in his arms, and standing horribly, impossibly close to the edge of the platform. A shot from Rossi to the chest would veer dangerously close to the unconscious child. A shot to the head was still dangerous. And, none of them were under any illusions that Reid couldn’t kill her before the bullet even landed.

“Do it,” Reid said, his voice a mocking challenge. “Take the shot. I won’t stop you. I’ll even fall so the girl remains unharmed.”

“Is that Foyet talking or you, Dr. Reid?” Rossi asked, still calm. Emily said nothing, Sergio frozen at her feet. Reid didn’t even spare her a glance. She could see Morgan and Hotch moving up behind Reid, keeping their distance, both of their faces shocked. Oh yeah. She hadn’t told them how different he looked. Maybe it would make it easier for them if Rossi did end up taking the shot. He didn’t really look a lot like their Reid anymore, not with his hair and the cruel expression he was wearing as a mask. Spencer Reid, a magician to the end. Master of the fucking illusion. He threatened the girl, but his grip on her was gentle, and his body angled away from the tracks.

“I killed them, you know,” Reid tried again, and the illusion slipped slightly. He was desperate. “I killed them and enjoyed every moment of it. You think I didn’t? I am what I was always meant to be; a hunter.”

“Foyet again,” Rossi stated, and lowered the gun. “We don’t want to talk to Foyet, Dr. Reid. We want to talk to Spencer Reid, our friend. The man who’ll do anything to save the girl in your arms.”

Reid exploded. “Shoot me!” he shouted, glancing around wildly, desperately, eyes skittering over Morgan before settling on Hotch. He controlled his voice this time, barely. “If you are merciful, you’ll end this. _Please._ ”

There was a long beat of silence and, even with the rumble of an oncoming train and the screams of civilians desperately trying to flee the area, Emily could hear her heart hammering. “Now that was Reid,” Rossi said finally, holstering his weapon. “You’re not going to hurt her. You’re not that far gone yet.”

“Yet,” Reid said numbly, closing his eyes. Hotch took a slow step forward. Then another. They held their breath. The train roared past, gone in an instant. Tracey still slept safely in his arms. He shuddered as though in pain. Hotch was next to him now. Reid looked at him, and something unsaid passed between the two. He deposited Tracey into Hotch’s outstretched arms, safe. For a moment, it was any other day and they’d just solved a case together.

“Lower your weapon, Prentiss,” said a low voice behind her. Gideon stepped up, his gaze locked on Reid and hungry. “You’ve got friendlies in your sight.”

“Stop him,” she breathed, the world snapping into vivid focus again and moving far too quickly. He’d be gone soon, he’d vanish again, out of reach. “Gideon, do something. Anything. He needs you.”

“You do have the power,” Rossi said mildly.

“I won’t hurt him,” Gideon replied, and, seconds later, Reid was gone. Again.

 

* * *

 

The aftermath of that case would be prohibitive, Emily knew. They travelled back to the BAU in silence. Gideon acknowledged no one and, when he left for the night, there was an application for leave on his desk. They all knew it would be granted.

JJ tried to pretend she hadn’t been crying, but Emily was done pretending. “It’s confronting, I know…” she began, touching JJ’s arm in the elevator, but JJ shook her head and pulled away.

“I can’t talk about it, Em,” she said quietly. “I can’t face it yet. I thought… I thought we’d get him back and put this all behind us, like nothing had happened. I thought he’d be the same. I don’t know why.” Emily understood that just as much as she wanted to laugh at the idea of it. How could anyone pass through the last three months unchanged, let alone Reid? They were all different now.

Morgan hugged JJ before she left and Garcia like he always did, and when Emily picked her bag up and slung it on her shoulder, he hugged her too. Clinging almost, like he’d seen the possibility of loss tonight and been terrified by it. He wasn’t usually the hugging type, so she tolerated it.

“If you see him again,” Morgan murmured quietly into her ear, and this was why he’d hugged her, so no one could overhear. “Tell him to do everything in his power to stay alive, and we will come for him.”

“I’ve been saying that all along,” she replied, and Sergio mewled in agreement.

Rossi was oddly quiet, no flippant remarks or casual jokes to try and lower the tension, and his eyes stayed locked on Hotch’s office. It was empty, Hotch in with Strauss, and Rossi didn’t pack his things.

“Are you going home?” Emily asked him when she couldn’t stall her leaving any longer and he still showed no signs of moving.

“Mm, not quite,” he replied, rubbing his eyes. She looked at Hotch’s office as well, unease setting in. Then she sat and waited with him, for as long as it took. When he finally appeared, he was quiet. Rossi stood, and his face was the question they both wanted to ask.

“Suspended for two weeks without pay,” Hotch said calmly. “They think I should have taken the shot and that my abilities have been compromised by Reid’s loss. You’re to lead the team in my stead, Dave.”

“That’s bullshit,” Rossi snapped, anger clouding his features. “I had a clearer shot than you, and he presented no danger. You did nothing wrong!”

“Didn’t I?” Hotch murmured, looking away. He walked out without glancing back once.

 

* * *

 

The next case was strange without Hotch. Without Gideon. Without Reid. There were more ghosts than souls in the jet these days. Rossi was distracted, pacing, ignoring all of them even as they tried to form a profile. Sergio watched him, gaze following the pattern of his feet on the carpet.

“He’s going to quit,” he said finally, stopping and running his fingers through his hair. “He’s going to quit the BAU.”

“Hotch or Gideon?” Morgan asked, because they’d been expecting this blow up since Quantico.

“Hotch. Both, probably. They’re giving up.” Rossi looked at her as he said this, eyes challenging.

“Gideon won’t leave while Reid needs him,” she responded, pressing her hand against her mouth for a second, teeth nipping at the nail, before catching herself. “Hotch… lost his family. Lost everything because of this case. And last week he found out that there’s not going to be a neat ending to this, that we can’t just bring Reid home and slip him back into his life like a missing puzzle piece.” She hoped it wasn’t obvious how bitter her voice was. JJ flinched, her own words echoing back at her.

“And then he gets suspended because he didn’t put a bullet in his teammate’s back,” Morgan added, and he wasn’t even bothering to hide his bitterness. “The teammate he’s obsessed with saving. If he needs to bail to stay sane, well… we can do this without him. I don’t want to lose another teammate like how we lost Elle because he doesn’t know how to walk away.”

“I don’t agree,” JJ said. Emily wondered if she was aware that there was ice forming on the table around her hand, the only sign of her distress. “We need him. Reid needs him. This is what Foyet wants; he wants to break us apart and make us vulnerable. Hotch is playing into his hands if he walks away now.”

“Gideon’s not answering his phone,” Rossi said finally, letting that sink in.

“Give him time,” Emily suggested, her stomach flipping uneasily and sending a wave of trepidation up her spine. “Give them both time.”

 

* * *

 

Home again and her phone woke her. She opened her eyes and stared at the brightness of the screen illuminating her bed stand, squinting slightly against the glare. She didn’t want it to be JJ. She couldn’t handle another case, not right now. They needed to heal. But, it wasn’t JJ.

**Gideon: Do you know where my cabin is? I need you here.**

She closed her eyes for a minute, opened them again and read the message twice, just to make sure. The contents didn’t change.

**To Gideon: What’s wrong? Do you want me to bring Rossi? Or Hotch?**

No answer. Oh, there was absolutely no fucking way that this wasn’t a trap.

“Sergio,” she called, slipping out of bed and reaching for her pants. “We’re going out.”

 

* * *

 

The cabin lay in darkness as she pulled up, car wheels crunching on gravel the only sound. She activated her runes before her feet even touched the ground, gratified when they responded instantly to her call. Further proof that whatever was fucking with her was in her head.

_“I don’t like this,”_ Sergio said, his mouth open and eyes diluted. _“I smell blood, Emily.”_

“We should leave,” she agreed, pulling her cell out and tapping out a text, sending it to everyone in the contact list labelled ‘work.’ “Walking in there is suicide.”

**To Bossman, JJ, Morgan, + 4 others:**    **At Gideon’s cabin. Received text from him asking me here. Almost certainly a trap.**

It sent with a satisfying _boop,_ and she turned it off before putting it in her pocket. She knew within seconds it was going to start ringing with anxious calls from every person who’d just received it. She also knew that it would be forty minutes, minimum, before any of them made it here, no matter how fast Morgan drove. Forty minutes was an eternity in the lion’s mouth. There was a polysyllabic sound from inside the cabin. Gideon’s phone receiving her text. Then, there was another.

Oh shit.

_“Emily,”_ Sergio said, but she was already moving. Gun out, runes on, pushing open the door of the cabin, credentials lighting up the room as she held her left hand out. The room stank of burning, of lightning and fire and copper. Reid was sitting on the table, legs crossed and head bowed. His hands hang loosely in front of him, gleaming black in the blue from her palm. She turned on the overhead light, and they turned crimson. Two more steps and she saw Gideon.

_“Oh no,”_ Sergio whispered, sinking to the floor.

Emily looked into Gideon’s eyes; they looked back sightlessly, and she knew that this was the moment everything ended. She turned her gun on him and rested her finger on the trigger. The job came first. The job absolutely always came first. At the end of her sight, his heart and hers.

Reid looked up and nodded.

She made her choice.


	10. Foil

On the day of the funeral, it rained. Emily thought he might have appreciated the weather’s sentiment. They bore the coffin and the weight of it dragged her down, threatening to bring her to her knees on the sodden earth. Hotch stumbled once. None of them cried. Emily suspected that they didn’t know how to anymore. After all, this was the second goodbye they’d had this year and, judging from the expressions on their faces when they’d found her sitting by his body, they had all lost hope of retracting one of those goodbyes.

When Hotch slipped again on the slick ground, Sergio appeared at her feet.

_“This is no way to pay our respects,”_ he said quietly, and the rain curved around them, running in rivulets over their heads as though someone had flipped a glass bowl over the grass-lined path.

There was no seeing the crowd around them through the water in her eyes, even as she shook her head to try and clear her vision. Pants slapping wetly against her legs, her shoes sinking into the gravel as she struggled to grip the wet brass of the handle. By the looks of the other pallbearers, they all suffered similarly, except for Rossi. He walked with his back straight and head high and didn’t falter once.

When the coffin lowered, every creak of the wood echoed hollowly with the memory of _I killed him._ In the eyes of every mourner surrounding them, more than she’d have ever imagined had loved the reserved man they buried, she saw his accusing gaze. The priest spoke, but she didn’t hear any of the words. Instead, she heard the final thing that she clearly remembered him saying. She was sure he’d said other things after, wished her goodnight, perhaps, or asked Hotch a question, but there was only one thing she could actually remember: _“I won’t hurt him.”_

In the end, he’d died for that promise. She watched her team grieve and said nothing of the man standing in the crowd of mourners with his face obscured. He wasn’t the only one. Many of them hid under umbrellas or hoods, including a small subset of magi with their faces hidden by the cowls of heavy cloaks.

He wasn’t any of those.

His invisibility had always relied on being unimportant and, despite them looking straight at him, Emily saw both JJ and Morgan’s eyes skitter over him. She didn’t want to think about what that meant. She had a horrible suspicion it was because he was no longer the man who the team knew. He’d been changed so much by that night in Gideon’s cabin that they couldn’t recognise him now even if they wanted to. That horrible suspicion was accompanied by a matching one that suggested that perhaps she was the only thing tying him to himself anymore.

When the ceremony ended, she slipped over to him and stood with their shoulders brushing together. He said nothing.

“The entire FBI and then some is here,” she murmured finally. “It’s a bit cocky of you to stand in the middle of them to say goodbye to a man they think you killed.” That was cruel. She regretted it as soon as she said it, but she was bizarrely angry for no good reason and needed to lash out at _something_.

Face still obscured, his words were muffled by the hood of the ratty jumper he was wearing. It looked bizarre on him, hanging loosely from slim shoulders. “The only man who would know me isn’t in the position to do so any more.” There was a choked misery to his tone, his breath hitching slightly. He grieved too. “I have nothing here to fear.”

She couldn’t grieve with him. Allowing herself emotion other than the anger was too dangerous. She closed her eyes, wishing for the black of her eyelids to block out this day and all the ones that had preceded it. All it allowed her was the ability to remember that night more clearly, in the refuge where he had ultimately fallen.

Spencer on the table with his hands soaked in blood and her gun on his heart. _“I killed him,”_ he had said dully. It rang with the truth, in a way his parroting Foyet at the train station hadn’t. _“He was my mentor, and I killed him.”_

“This isn’t your fault,” she said finally, opening her eyes. Morgan was looking around, looking for her. He didn’t seem to see her. The rain thickened around them. There was the acrid gunmetal smell of a storm’s potential in the air, as though they stood in the eye and around them chaos reigned. Spencer tilted his head back, his chin and the barest shadowed suggestion of his jawline becoming visible as he stared up directly into the rain, welcoming it.

Ah. Not the weather’s sentiment at all then.

“If he hadn’t been trying to protect me, he could have beaten Foyet,” Reid replied shortly, shoving his hands in his pocket and slouching, looking around at her. His posture had always been best described as terrible, but at this point it was approaching aggressively shitty. JJ would have scolded him to see it. “I was a weapon Foyet used to destroy him. How do I even begin to atone for that?”

Aching with the pain she knew he was feeling, she reached for his mind the same way she had that night, but he evaded her. Unlike last time, he wasn’t weakened by shock and grief and pain, and he shut her out completely. Her words of that night haunted her. Slipping through his fractured shields and finding herself overwhelmed with the familiar _loved_ feel of him and sickened by the way Hankel’s influence had settled his mind and thoughts like a spider’s silken web blown against a brick wall, clinging and colouring everything with the taste of him. She had tried to brush that cloying touch away, speaking directly to the part of him that still shone brightly, untouched. _“Look at me and say that again,”_ she had said, and her gun hadn’t wavered. _“And if I believe you, I’ll do it.”_

The same eyes from Hankel’s cabin had looked up at her, blank and broken. He’d spoke back, almost overwhelming her with the conflicting flavours of his mind. His own, sweet and familiar and laced with the acidic bite of Hankel and the dull coppery tang of his own misery. _“I’m responsible for his death,”_ he’d sent, and she’d lowered the gun. Not a lie. Not the truth, not fully. He’d believed it though. _“If I hadn’t been here, he wouldn’t have died.”_

That was the truth. She had holstered the gun and stepped over to her fallen mentor. Checked his pulse. Found nothing. Blood from the wounds on his chest, his torso, everywhere. Blood that was on Spencer’s hands, from where he’d tried and failed to save him.

Clumsy. Shadow magic wounds, not weather. Even Foyet hadn’t been able to set it up to his liking. Gideon had put up a hell of a fight. She hoped he’d made Foyet pay for this.

If he hadn’t, she would on his behalf.

“You should have shot me,” the Reid next to her said, overlaying the Reid of her memories. Water dripped down her back, her chest, absolutely _everywhere_ , souring her mood even more.

“You should stop trying to be so fucking self-sacrificing—we’re not going to. Gideon died to keep you alive.” She felt the shudder that ran through him at that. The rain faltered for a moment, then came back twice as fast. People hurried away, heads bowed against the deluge. “At least try to ensure that sacrifice wasn’t for nothing.”

“Foyet sends his regards,” Reid replied bluntly, his lip curling as he looked away. She followed his gaze to Hotch, standing by the grave with no regard for the rain that left his dark hair plastered to his forehead. “He wishes you to know that Gideon was not easily overcome. That my help was integral to his d-death.” Choking on the bitterness of the words he was being forced to deliver. “And… and to tell Aaron that running won’t… won’t save him. Or his family.”

“Tell him,” she replied, lacing her voice with venom, “that I can’t wait to put a bullet in his skull.”

Reid blinked at her from the shadows of the hood. “Don’t antagonise him. He’s stronger than you think.”

Snorting, she shook her head, a lock of wet hair flipping into her eye and stinging. “Bullshit. He’s exactly as strong as we think he is. Without you, he’s nothing. And you can’t hurt us—your own magic protects us from you.”

His fingers dug into the flesh of her arm as he grabbed her. “Please don’t rely on that,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Emily, if you’re all relying on that, don’t. Assume… assume that protection is breached. Please.”

Cold air bit at her shoulder as he dropped her arm and stepped away. She hadn’t realized how close they’d been standing. As he went, the rain picked up around her again. Someone called her name, but her focus was on his back, even as the rain and wind shifted to try and hide him from her gaze. She reached again for his mind, finding it but failing to gain entrance again, scrabbling at his mental shields. She threw the thought at him anyway, desperate. _“Spence, wait. Don’t vanish again. Gideon’s gone_ — _but you’re not. When you can, whenever you can, come back to me.”_ If he did, she could hold him. If not physically, but mentally. Give him something to fight for.

Anything to fight for.

A fleeting touch of his mind to hers, and the merest suggestion of love tempered with crushing loneliness. _“It’s not safe.”_

_“Don’t make me fucking beg you. In my entire life, I’ve never begged_ — _but I will now if you make me. Let us help you. Let me help you.”_

A long pause broken only by the wind. Finally: _“Okay.”_

The rain cleared, leaving her surrounded by people and alone in the cemetery by the grave of Jason Gideon. She turned her back on the space he had been standing and walked towards her team.  She could see one emotion on their faces. One determination that they all shared now. With Spencer’s final words, his promise to come back to her, she wore that determination too.

Foyet wasn’t making it out of this alive.

 

* * *

 

There was a knock at her door after the funeral, and she opened it to find Rossi wearing the most sombre expression she’d ever seen on him.

“Hotch wants the locks on everyone’s homes changed immediately,” he opened with, not breaking eye-contact with her, and she knew he wasn’t referring to the door. “I offered to help with yours so the Bureau’s locksmithmage didn’t have to go out of his way.” He smiled wanly, and it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Is that really why you’re here?” she asked, head buzzing as she steeled herself for a fight. There was no fucking way she was locking Reid out. Not now. Not yet.

There was silence for a long moment as he examined a point just beyond her right ear. “Of course; I don’t make a habit of lying to my superiors. Do you? Or do you just refrain from giving pertinent information, such as the presence of the most wanted demon in DC at the funeral today?”

Her heart stopped. At least, she was pretty sure it did. The last few days had been such a hectic ride of conflicting emotions, she wasn’t entirely sure what she was feeling at any one time anymore. “I don’t—”

“Don’t finish that sentence. If you don’t lie to me, I can pretend this is all absolutely peachy and that we’re not losing control of this situation. Or have we already lost control? I’d say we probably lost control right about the point we let Gideon walk out the door to his death, wouldn’t you?” His sombre expression slipped, and she saw the grief that lined his face.

Gideon was his friend. She’d forgotten that.

The door creaked as she held it open invitingly, gesturing him in. He didn’t move. “Coffee?” she offered weakly, her gaze dropping to his shoes for a moment. Pooled thickly around his feet, his shadow was a mass of black, formless and congealed. Either his magic was affected by his mood, or his shadow was mourning just as much as he was.

“That’s not why I’m here, Prentiss,” he said quietly, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers, gathering his thoughts. “Plain and simple, because I haven’t been clear enough before this, apparently; I’m going to teach you to use your magic to its full extent because you have the potential to be brilliant, and because Gideon would have wanted me to. And I completely understand that one day, we may be on opposing sides and the magic that I teach you may be used against me.”

Frozen, she stared at him. What the fuck? “I wouldn’t…”

“If Reid was at the end of my gun, you wouldn’t stop me? I think we both know that’s bullshit. We found you sitting in Gideon’s cabin, alone, next to his body, Prentiss. If you were ever going to take against Reid, it would have been in the moment you walked into that room and found your teammate dead with Reid standing over him. And you didn’t. Your loyalties no longer lie with the Bureau.” His shadow rippled and grew, almost a threat, and she felt suddenly small and hunted. None of this showed on her face but behind her the apartment rumbled, her runes reacting to her distress.

_“Reid was not responsible for the death of Jason Gideon.”_ Sergio appeared next to her, the size of a medium dog, tail lashing and the fur along his spine standing on end. _“We betrayed none of our loyalties. Foyet used him as a shield to stop Gideon from striking at Foyet himself_ — _Reid cast very little that night, and none of it aimed at his mentor. Her loyalties aside, do you think that I would have allowed him to leave there if I believed he had done it? That he was capable of doing it to her?”_

“You think I wouldn’t act if I needed to?” she snapped, coming back to herself with a surge of anger. Whether that anger was aimed at him for his assumptions of her, or herself for the suspicion that he may be right, she wasn’t sure.

“If that action resulted in Spencer Reid’s death? No. I don’t. Although, your familiar is a different story. I think he, at least, would do his duty to you and his country.” He settled back on his heels, and his mouth thinned into a line. “Which is why I’m going to train you to the best of my abilities, which I assure you are considerable, and we’re going to bring him back alive. Between the four of us, we can probably take Foyet. We can certainly take Hankel.”

“Four?” she asked, because that was the only part of that startling statement she felt even remotely ready to touch upon.

The shadow shifted and stood, forming out of the ground into the rough shape of an owl, made of rippling shades of grey. “Can’t you count?” it said in a husky, feminine voice, curling into smoke and reforming over the other side of Rossi, smoke-grey eyes whirling. “Or were you under the impression that your delightful kitty was the only familiar in the BAU?”

Sergio purred and Emily couldn’t look away. Rossi grinned smugly. “Cooler than a cat, isn’t she?” he said.

_“Doubtful,”_ Sergio said, shrinking down and narrowing his eyes. The effect was ruined by his continued purring; a sucker for compliments.

Rossi held out his hand. “Coming?” he asked, and she stepped out and closed the door behind her.

 

* * *

 

“Is this a field trip? Should I be taking notes?” Her foot skidded on the damp grass on the bank of the Potomac, almost dumping her on her ass. Having none of her difficulty, Rossi smirked and made his way easily down the steeply sloping surface towards the water. “Rossi, seriously. What are we doing?”

“Training,” he responded easily, reaching the water and nudging it with his shoe with no care for the undoubtedly expensive leather. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” she repeated incredulously, looking around for Sergio. The cat was nowhere to be seen, not trusting enough to stand on the side of a river with them. Pity. She could have used his snark to offset Rossi’s natural… Rossi-ness.

“You are,” Rossi began, turning and beaming happily at her, “handicapped. By your own magic.” Wow. Thanks for the vote of confidence. She glowered and said nothing. He continued, ignoring her dark scowl. “Light magic has its uses. For one, it’s so easy that even a child can learn it. Runes, spells, whatever; light mages work with the efforts of mages long dead to cast their spells. They make very little of their magic their own.”

This… wasn’t what she had expected. It certainly wasn’t dodging around Gideon’s office trying to fruitlessly procure a chess piece. “You sound like you hate light affined magic.”

“On the contrary, I think it’s marvellous. For one, it makes a brilliant foil to dark. So many people think they’re opposites, but, in reality, it’s nothing like that. You don’t cancel out the darkness with light—the strongest shadows are formed by the brightest lights.” His eyes were oddly intent, and something shivered down her spine. “Gideon and I were proof of that, back in our heydays. Secondly, and this is the bit I want you to pay attention to because it’s important, light magic makes what I do look so much more impressive in comparison, which makes me appear simply genius.”

_“And humble,”_ Sergio added, appearing at a safe distance and picking his way cautiously across the grass. _“Don’t forget how humble you are.”_

Rossi shrugged, settling his heels into the mud more firmly. “I have to have flaws, otherwise I’d be too wonderful to live with.” As he gestured her closer, she inched over to him, not quite as keen to end up in the river as he seemed to be. “Thirdly, I don’t believe the divide between the two is anywhere near as wide as what is commonly thought. And I think, Agent Prentiss, that you are the proving of this theory.”

“Me?” she asked warily. “I’m light affined. Through and through.”

Dark eyes studied her. She was forcefully reminded of the way Reid had looked at her, that first day at the BAU. “Maybe once. But now? I don’t think it’s so clear. Dark mages are limitless. We draw our energy not from the stored energy of the runes that you’ve covered your body with, but from the world surrounding us. Close your eyes and reach for me, just like you’d reach for your runes.”

This was ridiculous. “This is ridiculous,” she muttered, closing her eyes nonetheless. Insects buzzed, the sun beat down on her neck, and this was _ridiculous_. She could no more find Rossi than she could tap into the power of the Poto—

_“Focus,”_ Sergio urged, right as her questing mind stumbled straight into something older and stronger than she could ever be and was almost lost.

It was like tumbling into a speeding current, feeling the slight tug under her feet that swept her in. For a bizarre moment, she was falling even though her body stood still, almost dragged away from herself. Someone caught her; not one of the two minds she was familiar with—neither Reid’s cotton-candy saccharinity or Sergio’s itchy dander—but someone smooth and sleek like the fur of a sea otter she’d patted at the zoo one time. Underneath that smooth texture was warmth and fun and the comforting glow of experience. There was also darkness, the promise of violence, a predators’ caution.  

_“Woah,”_ she thought wildly, feeling ill as the mind that held her did little to stop the waves from tugging at her and trying to coax her further into their grasp.

_“Welcome to the Potomac,”_ Rossi said, his mind swooping with the delight of being _right_. Even his brain was unbearably smug. _“She likes you. Also, I told you so. She’s an old river, but generous_ — _draw from her. I won’t let you drown, and you won’t need a visible rune to work with once you tap her strength, although it will make it easier for you if you do visualize one.”_

She did as he instructed, reaching into the rushing current of the power that eddied around her and drawing forth a whorl of it. It was slippery in her mind’s grasp, hard to understand how to hold until she took a steadying breath and thought of the even trail of paint under her brush. She knew how to use ink and paint, knew how to shape them. Once she thought of this power as the ink and her as the brush that shaped it, it was impossibly simple, and more power than she’d ever handled before, even this tiny amount. It was… terrifyingly seductive. She shivered at the conflicting emotions, suddenly horribly aware of why their teachers had always pushed the need to be aware of the dangers of being lost in yourself. It would almost be a pleasure to be lost to this.

_“Good. Fantastic. Do something simple with it. Something you know off by heart. Something familiar. Make a light, perhaps. Or a song. I don’t know what you do with your spare time.”_

Something familiar; the first thing they learned was to cast a light. It was a good way for teachers to tell how much power they were pouring into their spells, to better teach them control. She thought of the light and thought of the rune, and suddenly a memory of her thrusting her hand under Reid’s nose intruded, the blue gleam of her creds casting shadows onto his distracted face. He’d smiled. She felt the memory of the smile, remembered his mind.

She fumbled the light and tripped, and then she wasn’t by the river anymore.

 

* * *

 

She was in a church, old and abandoned, littered with the rotted remains of broken pews and an altar that had seen better days. The reek of damp filled the air, especially thick in the corner she was hunkered down in; sitting cross-legged on a pile of assorted blankets arranged in a kind of make-shift nest with her back against the wall.

She was hungry, hungrier than she could ever remember being, and her hands shook in her lap. She knew fear and loneliness and a bone-biting cold that wouldn’t go away no matter how much she curled into herself to try and warm up. The back of her mind hummed with an unconscious _need_ for something, something to slow it, something to numb it. Her eyes tracked the others with her, thoughts racing faster than she’d ever known them to and neatly ordering themselves in a way her mind never had before.

Foyet paced in front of her, his face cruel and furious, and, between them, stood Hankel.

“You don’t have the right,” Hankel was saying, cowering back but not shifting, not allowing Foyet access to her. “You don’t, you don’t. _‘Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.’_ That’s what was said. You can’t hurt him, he’s mine.”

“Maybe he should have thought of that before he continually began subverting me at every chance he got,” snapped Foyet, turning on them both with his skin rippling ominously, shadows playing cat’s cradle at his fingertips. Emily’s breath caught in her throat, her eyes locked on those shadows.

_Don’t stand down, Tobias,_ she thought desperately. _Don’t let him hurt me._ With it came a sickly kind of affection, the affection of a beaten dog when offered a pat from the opposing hand to the one that struck them. Foyet could hurt her with those shadows. He had before. Ordered her to stand still and covered her in them, tying her down, pinning her helplessly, his flesh fingers digging into her skin…

She choked back a yelp of shock at the memory of Foyet’s shadows on her, in her, and her regard suddenly turned sharply inward.

_“Emily?”_ she thought, a cold rush of horror and confusion tearing through her and almost shaking her loose. _“What…?”_

Foyet moved, ducking around Hankel and the shadows lashed. She jerked upright. _Run_ , she thought in a panic, and she did, wings up and out the side door, bright, hot light slashing into their eyes and it wasn’t her, wasn’t her at all. Her/his foot caught a gravestone and almost toppled them over and he was trying to shove her out, shove her away, he didn’t want her to see what was—

Pain. It exploded in the base of her skull and in his spine, and they screamed.

Someone grabbed her arm, and his, and wrenched them away from each other. Pain burned in her hand—her hand, not his—and she opened her eyes. Sergio stood on her chest, trembling, blood oozing from the bite mark on the meat of her thumb. She was… with Rossi. Rossi, who was staring at her wide-eyed and shocked, the mud under her seeping wetly into her clothes. On her back, on the bank, not a church or a graveyard in sight.

_“You idiot!”_ screamed Sergio, spitting. _“You stupid, rat-brained fool! Where did you go? Something was hurting you!”_

“What was that?” Rossi was demanding at the same time, his fingers cutting into her shoulder. She blinked up at him, the images of _him_ still flooding her mind. “You vanished, where the hell did you go? Your damn cat couldn’t even wake you up.”

Pushing Sergio to the ground, she staggered up, feeling the phantom echoes of his pain fading from her body, even though she knew that _somewhere,_ he still screamed. “He’s in a cemetery,” she said numbly, her voice oddly feminine and shrill to her after her unplanned cavort into Reid’s brain. “We were wrong. They didn’t run at all. They have him in a cemetery.”

 

* * *

 

“You saw through his eyes?” Hotch spoke slowly, his brow furrowed.

Hissing air out between clenched teeth, frustrated, Emily had to concentrate on not snapping. “I _was_ him. I knew what he felt, what he thought. I don’t know how it happened—but I didn’t imagine it, Hotch.”

“What was he feeling?” JJ asked, blue eyes wary. They were gathered in her living room, JJ perched sedately on the arm of her couch. Morgan paced by her bookshelves, his expression ominous. Rossi and Hotch stood together, saying nothing.

She swallowed before answering. “Isolated. Scared. Mostly scared. Hungry.”

_High._

“Think like a profiler, not a friend,” Rossi said, cutting in before JJ could say any of the thoughts that were racing across her distressed face. “You said to save him you’d profile him—well, you just got front row seats to his head. Profile away.”

“I only got a split second,” she argued, turning to face him because watching JJ try to process Reid’s misery was painful. “I can’t profile him on a split second spent in his mind while he was being tor…” She trailed off quickly, but they all knew what she was going to say.

Morgan growled, low and deep, and something small and primal in her brain screamed at her to _run, run away from the predator._ When she ignored it, and looked around at him, it wasn’t he who looked dangerous. JJ’s eyes were winter storms and the air around her almost cracked with power. Everything in Emily told her that what brewed inside the sedate looking elf was deadly and unstoppable.

Good. She couldn’t wait to aim that pointed fury at Foyet.

“Bullshit,” Rossi said, straightening. His shadow curled around his feet, darkening with anger. “You wouldn’t be working here if you couldn’t. We profile with less every day; what are you keeping from us?”

Sergio’s voice was a whisper. _“Emily, I know you don’t trust easily. But what more must these people do for you to trust them? They care for Reid just as much_ — _if not more_ — _as you do. And Rossi has proven himself five times over. Work with them.”_

She took a deep breath and stepped back, slipped away from Emily-girlfriend-of-Spencer, and towards Agent Prentiss. It was very much like wearing the mask of Elizabeth Prentiss’ daughter, like she had on the first day of the BAU. _Sorry, Reid._ “Foyet has some control over him, not as much as we’ve been thinking. Hankel… Hankel has a lot more control. Reid lets him; he won’t fight him as hard.”

“Let him? Why the fuck would he let him?” snapped Morgan. Hotch’s mouth thinned, and his eyes turned downward, almost open sorrow from the stoic man. He knew. He knew what she’d guessed already.

“Hankel protected him from Foyet. By the looks of it, it’s a protective role he’s taken numerous times over the past four months. Reid’s reaction towards Hankel’s presence as a result of this was distinctly… positive.”

When response came, Morgan sounded almost hurt. “You didn’t want to tell us he was exhibiting Stockholm? Christ, Emily, we’re the last people to judge him for that. No shit he is, I’d be shocked if he _wasn’t._ It’s a survival technique, and I’m all for anything that involves ‘not dying’ on his behalf.”

“How great is Hankel’s influence over him?” Hotch kept his emotions out of his voice. He was a lot better at that since Gideon’s death. While the rest of them had been rattled, almost broken, by the loss of one of their own, it had given their leader a focus he’d struggled to gain before.

Emily thought of the tightly restrained rush of almost-affection tempered with fear and longing in their chest when Hankel had moved between them and Foyet. It hadn’t just been the promise of some kind of protection from pain, there had been something else there as well. Something that Hankel could offer him that he’d come to crave. “Strong enough that I’m glad Foyet seems content to be the one attempting to give the orders,” she said slowly. “He underestimates Hankel; he has no idea that Hankel’s control is twice as strong as his is. If Foyet knew, if he’d taken advantage of that, he would have turned Reid months ago.”

_“And we would be standing at the end of a long line of bodies,”_ Sergio added coolly. Emily’s stomach lurched into her throat.

“That fits his profile,” JJ said, mouth twisting in distaste. “He can’t bear for someone else to be in control.”

She wasn’t done. “They’re using drugs,” she said quickly, the words leaving a sour taste in her mouth. No one looked shocked. “Sergio smelled narcotics on him the night he came here, and he… his reactions were slower than they should have been when he tried to escape Foyet while I was in his mind. He stumbled. He didn’t even realize I was there until I panicked. He should have noticed straight away; any other time we’ve communicated he has.”

Hotch went to speak, but JJ, in a rare show of forcefulness, spoke over him. “Wait, what? Communicated via his mind? When? How?” Her voice was tight with surprise and something else. Something colder and worrying.

“Before, mostly,” she replied, keeping her tone even. Mouth dry, it was harder to speak than she would have liked, especially as JJ paled. “We… I don’t know how. We could speak via our minds quite easily. We thought it was unusual, but I guess we never got around to working out why.”

“What does it matter?” Morgan resumed his pacing, picking the books out of her shelf restlessly and putting them back with barely a glance. “It’s a good thing, right? It means Prentiss can look in on him, make sure he’s alive. Maybe see something more that could help us find him. He can’t tell us where he is - but maybe he can think it and she can pick up on that.”

Hotch was staring at JJ. “JJ?” he asked, slowly. “Morgan’s right. We can use this to our advantage, however it came about.”

Blue eyes met hers and in them was an accusation and an apology all at once. There was a rush of sick heat in Emily’s belly that travelled up to her face, the premonition of something terrible coming. “We thought it was odd he was bound so easily,” she murmured, biting her lip. “But if he was speaking to you, his shields were down. His shields were down so he could talk to you, and that’s how they gained access before we could find him.”

The heat became a rushing torrent of cold that drowned everything out around her.

Her fault. His pain, their loss, Gideon’s death; all tied to that singular moment sitting on the medic’s bed when they’d touched their minds and sealed their fates. She’d thought at that moment it was risky. She’d said nothing.

This was all her fault.


	11. Hankel

It was her turn to knock on someone’s door. Rossi answered, dressed for bed and raising a dark eyebrow at her. “If you need a shoulder to cry on, I charge by the hour—” he began, leaning against the door, but she cut him off.

“How fast can you teach me dark affined magic?” she demanded, squaring her shoulders determinedly. By the way both his eyebrows now rocketed up into his hairline, he was very aware of the insanity of what she was asking. “Even just the basics. I’ll do the rest.”

He stared at her. “It took four years to learn light. You’ll have to unlearn that before you can begin to tap dark magic on your own. It will take time, Prentiss.”

She fortified herself. Guilt had crippled her after JJ’s horrifying announcement, replacing the grief that she’d floundered in since Reid had been taken. She was tired of floundering. No more. She was _done_ grieving. Emily Prentiss intended to take back what was hers, even if doing so involved rewriting the laws of magic to suit herself. “Time is something we don’t have,” she said, and her voice was iron and steel. Something replaced the wariness in his expression, a grudging kind of respect. “I don’t need to unlearn light. I intend upon knowing both, and you’re going to teach me.”

“Oh, this is going to be _fun_ ,” hissed Rossi’s shadow, twisting around her feet and humming with barely suppressed excitement. “It’s been so long since we did something impossible.”

 

* * *

 

Garcia set to scouring her databases for anything to help find him with a dogged kind of pervasiveness that suggested she’d been some kind of scent-hound in a past life. “If it’s creepy, spooky, or at all hooky, I am all over it,” she’d announced, her screens flaring to life around her and flashing with a dizzying array of searches. “There won’t be a church in the country that I don’t find and you guys don’t tear apart for him, got it?”

They didn’t argue with her. But the records for old resting sites were patchy, and they soon found themselves running out of listed sites to raid. Strauss grudgingly allowed them the use of the FBI’s services to continue the search, Gideon’s death having spurred another spike of interest in the continued disappearance of their agent.

Sometimes, Emily wondered what really went on in the woman’s mind. Was she on their side or not? She’d backed off of Hotch’s case, but Emily suspected that was because Hotch was one bad day away from shattering like a badly mounted window. He’d taken on a kind of hunted, brittle persona, his steps faltering as he exited buildings as he scanned the rooftops around him and his gun always within reach. Gideon’s death had hurt them all, but Hotch the most, especially the day that they’d shown up and found Rossi’s name on the door instead of Gideon’s. By the way Rossi had blanched, he hadn’t known anything about it. Strauss had shaken her head and refused to see any of them about it, and that was the first time Emily had wondered what was going on in the woman’s head. Sometimes, she thought that she’d rather not find out for sure. She hated politics.

Raid after raid turned up empty. In between cases, they moved onto scouring old journals for mentions of any kind of cemetery. As well as all of that, Emily devoted every last waking moment to relearning her craft, twisting the runes and spells she’d honed with light to obey the dark. Slowly at first, and then quicker, she got results.

She fell into bed at the end of every night exhausted to her bones and almost trembling with weariness, but she wasn’t done yet. Closing her eyes, she cast her mind out for that familiar touch, trying to replicate the moment when she’d tumbled into his body. Sometimes she felt a flicker of _something_ ; an awareness at the corner of her reach, but every time she lunged for it, it slipped away.

Twice, only twice, did she manage it. The first time he was walking through the twisted ruins of a long-ago-burned husk of a house, and his heart ached. She slipped away before he became aware of her presence, unable to hang on without a greater power grounding her. The second time was a whirlwind of confusion, sinking into his thoughts easily but finding him wrapped in the embrace of another, an unfamiliar form under him and she panicked and tried to bolt before he sensed her. He leapt up with a startled yelp, his thoughts turning inward and reaching for her, questing. _“Emily, wait!”_ But, she was gone and spent the day haunted by hands on his hips and the slide of bodies together. She didn’t blame him, she wasn’t mad or angry. How could she be when she’d felt the all-consuming hunger that weakened him?

She just hoped that it was his choice.

Her dreams were scattered and stunk of rotted wood and sweat, and none of them lingered when she woke. Days bled into each other, cases went by in a blur, time slipped endlessly by. It felt like they were running in place towards a prize that hung just out of reach.

He didn’t visit.

Six months since Georgia.

 

* * *

 

They were taking a break from training, Rossi calling it and not allowing her to argue after he’d seen her stumble. She wasn’t exhausted, her foot had just caught on a tuft of wiry grass, but he refused to listen to her. She knew him well enough by now that there wasn’t much point arguing. Slumped on the bank, she stared out at the grey-blue surface of the river and contemplated reaching for it. She knew how to now, she’d learned that much, but she also knew that if she did, Rossi would know. And, somehow, she didn’t think he’d be as keen for her to repeat their first training session as she was.

It was the first time they’d come back here since that day, and she was sorely tempted.

“Prentiss,” said a warning voice behind her. “We discussed this. It’s dangerous when you use too much power, it sends too much of you.”

The dirt gritted into her hands as she dug her fingers angrily into the earth underneath. None of this showed on her face. “Without it, I can’t hold him. I just dip in and out, it’s useless. We’ll never find him without more information.”

Darkness fell over her as he stepped closer and then promptly slipped away, gone off to amuse itself. It left him bereft of a shadow, an odd sight for her, but one that he seemed used to. He stared at the river as well, thoughtful. “Perhaps. Your use of dark magic appears to lock yourself away from Sergio—he’s the only one who can haul you back if you get lost again, and he couldn’t reach you that day. Without using light, it blocked him.”

When the idea hit, it was fast and thrilling and left her breathless. “Wait, _Rossi._ He’s bound to me—but using the wrong affinity cut him off, yeah?” He didn’t answer, just narrowed his eyes, and she continued, heaving herself upright and pacing, mind racing. She felt like Reid, with her thoughts tumbling over one another, only without a modicum of his control. “So, if I can somehow, _somehow,_ pull Reid into the light, it will cut him off from Hankel? Even for just a moment?”

Silence. A bird whooped somewhere over the water. She couldn’t even look at him, half terrified by his response. This could be it—the breakthrough they needed. She was also pretty sure this had never been done. But then again, a light mage had never delved as far into dark magic before either. She had no idea why she was the exception. Well, she had some idea. But she was pretty sure it wouldn’t be done again, since there wasn’t exactly tons of incubi around to touch minds with anymore. Nor would she recommend it. If the simple act of melding herself with him had changed her magic so drastically, what else had it changed?

“You realize,” Rossi said finally, slowly, “that what you’re suggesting won’t destroy his binding. It didn’t damage yours.”

Her hope sunk, but only for a second. “We… we could hold him. Hold him within me, like I was in him, and surge the binding. We could destroy it with sheer power.”

“And him along with it.” Now there was emotion in Rossi’s voice, a dark warning that boded ill for her grand idea. “Jesus _fuck_ , Emily! That will kill him, as well as Hankel and Foyet, and probably you and Sergio along with it! You’re proposing we torch the forest to roast a marshmallow—are you _insane_?”

She thought of the exhaustion that bit at all of them and steadied herself. This was their only idea, their only chance. They had to make it work. They were running out of other options. “It’s our best chance of saving him,” she argued, feeling her fingertips pressing against her palms as her hands clenched. She didn’t have any nails to cut her, not after months of strain. They were gnawed down to bloody nubs at this point.

“Absolutely not,” he snarled, without even missing a beat, and turned to stalk up the bank. “I forbid it. If I see even one hint of you attempting this… this _suicidal idiocy_ … I’ll have you stripped of your mage license and thrown out on your ass. We won’t bury another teammate.”

Sergio appeared on her shoulder, his whiskers tickling her cheek as they watched the seething mage rip open the door of his car and drop inside. “What do you think?” she asked him quietly, not quite ready to give up on the idea yet. It wouldn’t let her anyway, filling her mind and making it impossible to ignore. “He’s right. I’ll be risking both our lives.”

A warm tail curled around the back of her neck. _“It needs work,”_ he sent softly, purring. _“But… I think between us, we could make it work. Not yet though. Promise me not yet. There may be less risky ways. And he will need something to keep him alive until the shock of dismantling the binding so violently has faded, otherwise it will likely drag him into death along with Hankel. Burn the necromancer, burn the demon, after all.”_

Judging from the cold look Rossi gave her as she got in the passenger seat, Sergio in her lap, he knew she hadn’t given up on the idea. She wondered if this was the moment he’d predicted, when they went their separate ways. She hoped not. She’d gotten kind of fond of his grumpy old ass.

She doubted he felt the same.

 

* * *

 

After everything they’d been through, she had thought there was very little that could surprise her. As it turned out, she was wrong. Gripping her mug of tea tightly, she turned away from the kettle on her kitchen bench and almost walked straight into him.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” she yelped, throwing the mug at him out of reflex. He was lucky she didn’t throw a rune at him as well. “Reid, what the fucking fuck?!” Her other hand against the heart attempting to batter its way out of her ribcage.

He blinked and the mug hurtled harmlessly off to the side before it could hit him, splattering Sergio’s novelty ‘A Cat a Day’ calendar with tea. “Sorry,” he said, looking at the calendar and smiling nervously. “I did knock. You were… thinking.”

The curtain on the kitchen window fluttered. She was going to nail the damn thing shut. Well, no she wasn’t. But she was going to threaten to, once she got over how _shitfucking relieved_ she was to see him. And to see him looking so… okay. Not amazing, not in the peak of health, but a million times better than the last time she’d seen him. He’d even put some weight back on, enough that she wasn’t worried that his skin would tear if she held onto him too tightly. Which she fully intended to, once her heart had stopped having palpitations.

“You’re okay,” she said stupidly, leaning back against the bench to collect her scattered thoughts. “I mean… you look. Okay.”

He shrugged and pulled his coat tighter around him. It wasn’t his, she could tell. It was slightly too big and far too expensive-looking to be his. Also, it was a coat that she could imagine someone his age wearing, which meant it was at least twenty years out of style for his usual choice of wardrobe. “I’m less useful when I’m ill. Foyet’s insane, but he’s not stupid. He gives me some leeway to survive. And…” he paused, scanning her up and down with a piercing gaze that made her shiver. “I have a reason to survive now.” The smile snuck back, shy and uncertain, and her heart cracked a little.

“You had a reason before,” she said quietly, stepping forward. One step. Two. He lifted his arm, reaching for her. She hesitated before making the final step. “You’ve always had a reason, idiot.”

He did that stupid head tilt he did, cocking his head like her grandmama’s old Labrador retriever when faced with something that confused her. Lots of things had confused her. “You kept reaching for me. Ever since that day you were in my thoughts, you’ve been looking for me. You’ve never given up.” Damnit. There was a hint of awe in his voice that melted any resolve she’d had to be hard with him. She stepped into his arms, resting her head on his shoulder and inhaling the scent of him, their hearts beating as one. He smelled of soap and rotted wood, and the faintest hint of an earthy loam. So, he’d showered, but his clothes hadn’t. And he was still sleeping in the church. They could still find him. Why wasn’t Foyet moving them?

“Of course, I did,” she mumbled into his shoulder, “I told you I wasn’t going to give up on you.” She took the chance to sneak her hand down his hip, slipping into his coat pocket and folding her fingers around what she found in there. “And you’ve had your cell this whole time, you dick.”

He stiffened in her grasp as she tugged it out and held it between them awkwardly, the screen cracked and uncharacteristically grubby for such a neat-freak. She could feel charms around the phone buzzing under her fingertips, several of her runes reacting to the concealment charms someone had smothered the device in.

“It won’t call or text,” he admitted. “Foyet… he got it off Hankel. Seemed to think it would be a source of disillusionment for me to have it and not be able to contact anyone on it. To, um… watch as you guys slowly gave up on me. Garcia wouldn’t be able to track it either. Hankel made sure of that.”

“Oh,” she breathed, guilt settling heavily into her gut and making her chest ache. She’d stopped texting him. Even knowing he had the phone after she’d heard it buzz at Gideon’s cabin, she hadn’t texted him. It had felt… wrong. Some part of her had rebelled at the possibility her texts were going straight to Foyet, giving him some insight into her heart he could use against either of them. After he’d texted her using Gideon’s cell, she hadn’t put it past him.

And, all this time, Reid _had_ been getting them. She pressed the cell on, sliding her thumb across to unlock it slowly, giving him the chance to take it away. He didn’t.

“It backfired for him, I guess,” Reid said finally, cryptically, and there was that awe again. That faint disbelief that even after all this time, he still mattered to them.

Two taps of her finger and she’d called his inbox up and almost gasped. She might have stopped texting, but she was the only one who had.

**Morgan: We packed up Gideon’s stuff today. He left his chessboard for you. I’ll keep it safe until you come home. Stay safe, stay strong.**

**Jareau:** **Good morning, Spence. Six months now** **—I bet you could tell me exactly how many hours and minutes right down to the second. Please don’t though. So, I finally finished that book from your library. I’m not sure I understood 80% of it, but you can explain it when you come home.**

**Morgan:** **What kind of an unsub would pose their victims showing remorse, but kill them in such a way that it almost seems like he hates them? Man, we need you here for these kinds of cases.**

**Garcia:** **E got into a fight with S today. He was trying to jump up on her desk and he knocked her coffee everywhere. I think she was more upset that she had no coffee than that he covered her in it. You’d have laughed.**

**Garcia:** **E misses you. She doesn’t show it much, but sometimes she looks sad when she thinks no one is watching. So don’t you give up on us, my love.**

**Morgan:** **Ten letters, meaning overly sweet or cloying. Has a double C. Don’t fail me now, or Prentiss is never going to let me forget it.**

**Morgan:** **Damnit she got it. It was saccharine. She’s spending way too much time with Rossi, she’s got his smug smile down.**

She kept scrolling. Months of names, hundreds of texts. Updates from Garcia about her, Morgan asking for advice on their cases and pretending everything was normal, JJ telling him how loved he was, how missed. And then…

**Hotchner:** **Tell Foyet message received. Here’s one in return. We’re coming for him, and he’s going to regret the day he took my family from me.**

**Hotchner:** **All of my family, Spencer. That means you too.**

“Spencer…” she murmured finally, stunned. He took the phone back, cradling it like it was precious.

Maybe it was.

“It’s alright, Em,” he said, his eyes smiling even though his mouth was a tired line. “You forget, I’ve seen your mind. Out of everyone, I know your heart the best.” He leaned down and pressed his lips to hers and for a few hours, just a few, they could ignore the world and everything that drove them apart.

 

* * *

 

Hands that were almost frustratingly gentle guided her hips against his, moving slowly, his face sharply focused. She hissed a moan out between clenched teeth, feeling him rock ever so slightly into her, the barest pressure against her as he threatened to press in, dropping his face against hers so his eyelashes brushed along her cheek as he blinked. He was being so fucking _aggravating._ She didn’t want slow and careful. Not tonight. Not when he was still less than he had been, and she needed nothing more than for him to show her that he could still be in control, still had some strength remaining within him.

She arched up, rubbing her body against him like a cat, naked skin sliding alongside his; his body warm and hard and angular under her hands. She kept finding bones that hadn’t been there previously, the uneven light from the hallway casting shadows on them that showcased the changing tapestry of his body, forming and hiding bruises on his pale skin. She couldn’t tell what was simply an illusion of the light or where he was actually marked.

Every time her hands brushed the gold on his arms, she jerked away involuntarily like she’d been burnt, and, every time, he flinched. They were out of sync, lost to each other, and, even as he shivered and pressed his mouth to her throat, she felt him softening.

“You’re holding back,” she said finally, after minutes had passed and he’d done nothing but lay atop her, half hard and shivering in the cool air. “Why?”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he mumbled against her skin, shifting uneasily, running his lips over her collarbone, down to the curve of her breast. From here she could see down the long lines of his back, where his wings would sit if they weren’t hidden away, down to the curve of his ass. When he settled, the light landed across that area and a coy remark about his rear had almost left her lips before she processed the dark bruising it illuminated along his hip. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he’d been hurt plenty. She examined it. She didn’t need to think too hard about what could have caused it. He on the ground, on his knees maybe, a booted heel slamming into the bone and grinding down. Falling to protect his stomach, his head, leaving his back and side exposed.

“You can’t hurt me,” she lied, because he’d already hurt her plenty, and she hadn’t been naked and vulnerable under him for that. But he didn’t need to know that, not yet. “Spence, look at me.” He did, and his eyes darkened with something hungry, holding her gaze with a shadowed focus that betrayed his reticence. “I need this just as much as you do.”

He didn’t say anything, just watched her thoughtfully. Considering. She leaned closer to him, pressed her lips against his, slowly, teasing his apart. He let them fall open, let her slip her tongue in, biting down on his lower lip and falling back onto the pillows. She drew him with her, gently, one leg around his thigh and a hand on the small of his back. His gaze never wavered.

She kissed him again, rolling her hips in a smooth rhythm not designed to push up against him, but just enough that she could feel the head of his cock nudging against her soft curls, the heat reigniting in her belly and pooling between her legs. She was going to lead the damn horse to water, even if that horse seemed to be determined to stay out of the proceedings. Well, not that determined. She felt him hardening against her leg, despite the blankness of his face.

“Spencer,” she breathed into his mouth on the next kiss, rocking up, sliding the length of him between her legs, feeling that tentative interest spark up again as he felt the wetness that pressed against him, the proof of her arousal. She dropped back down slowly, feeling him exhale a long breath she hadn’t realized he’d been holding. His eyes were closed now, fingers tightening in the flesh of her shoulder, and she felt his hip twitch ever so slightly, seeking her, the muscles of his legs moving under her thigh.

She paused, before sliding her hand off his back and taking his, pulling it back to the headboard and wrapping her fingers around the wooden bar of her bed, the other following. His fingers rested on hers for a long moment before his eyes flickered open, and he looked at them, puzzled. While his genius brain tried to figure it out, she angled her hips and rocked up one last time, this time arching and feeling the head of his cock dip into that wetness, slipping as he jerked up in shock before pressing down against as his brain promptly short circuited and he forgot to stay uninvolved. And, in that second, as he slipped a hair’s-breadth inside her, she arched and he saw what she was doing. Arms behind her head, laying herself open and completely pliant under him, completely trusting.

“You can’t hurt me,” she said again, slightly more breathless since she was still moving her hips a tiny bit which meant that they were both very aware that one push from either of them would have him inside her and, fuck, the idea was _impossible_ to resist. She lost her thought for a second in a warm rush of heat as she imagined that focused expression vanishing, replaced with desire, him being unable to resist taking what she offered. How hard and filling he’d be, the moan he’d make as she tightened around him, his eyes blown and coming in a hot rush… “ _Fuck_ ,” she swore, dancing on the edge of _toomuchtoomuch_ and his eyes widened as he felt her getting wetter around him without him doing much at all, really.

It had been way too long.

“Spencer,” she enunciated carefully, stilling her rocking hips so they were a tense, frozen form locked together. “You have no idea how much I need you to fuck me, please, just… _now_.”

She remembered him coming inside her the first time they’d slept together and was almost so wrapped up in the memory she didn’t feel him gasp and shudder, until suddenly there was a hand gripping her wrist almost too tightly, his other bracing him next to her arm, and _ohgodfuckyes_ a hard cock in her, moving, taking her apart and it was _exactly_ what she wanted. He wasn’t slow now, even though she could tell he was trying to be, his rhythm uneven and stuttering although she couldn’t care less as long as he went just a little bit _more._

“Emily,” he hissed, ducking his head with his teeth nipping at the skin of her shoulder, almost too hard, and she wanted harder. Wanted to feel the pinch, wanted to bruise. She couldn’t ask for that. She needed to be lost and he needed his control back, and she didn’t know how to tell him that, so instead she released the headboard with fingers that cramped under the deepening thrusts of his body, and leaned up into him so she could tap those fingers against her shoulder.

The runes hummed as they deactivated and, suddenly, for the first time, she was coolly aware of the raw power that ran under his skin. He was staring at her shoulder, her fingers, and she had been worried that would throw him off his game, except she could feel how fucking hard he was inside her and his mouth worked silently, shocked and aroused.

“Please,” she said again, and he looked troubled for just a moment, before casting off the glamour like a breeze and catching her eyes again, and this time she let herself fall.

Hazel eyes that she was drowning in, helpless, melting under him, her entire consciousness suddenly focused around the electric jolt that travelled from her brain to her belly and then her centre where he worked within her; he dropped his head to kiss at her jaw, her neck, but she didn’t care because she could still see those eyes, impossible to escape even if she wanted to; she may have been whimpering but none of it was words she recognised.

Wrapping both legs around him now, she felt empty even though she could feel him and she wanted more, needed it, so she pulled him in deep, hard, his teeth biting into the skin of her shoulder. She knew there’d be a mark and she moaned _yes, now_ , already trembling, feeling the pooling tension. She was dancing on the knife’s edge of her climax, except she wasn’t ready, she needed to feel him, she needed him to come. She needed to feel that, what it was like. She needed to know.

“Not yet,” he said, catching her mouth with his and drawing her into a shuddering kiss, as though he could pull her away from her orgasm with his lips. Turned out he could, and that should have pissed her off, except she was still lost.

“What?” she asked, almost groaned, as he swallowed the words and she felt him move his hips, slipping almost all the way out, before burying himself deeply in her again and taking away her ability to think about anything but him coming, her coming, any sort of release oh god, she needed to come _rightnowletme_.

_Please._

Dark eyes caught her and she wondered how she could have ever thought of disobeying them. “I didn’t say you could come yet,” he said, and his mouth quirked slightly, lopsided, almost a shade of himself, but his eyes were everything he wasn’t and she felt her body pause on the threshold, unable to ignore that quiet command. Shit. She was aware enough to know he wasn’t even using his full powers, and also aware enough to know that it didn’t fucking matter because if he promised to fuck her while she did it, she’d probably willingly do most anything he told her.

Later, she’d think of that and realize that maybe she’d goaded him into this so she could know a taste of what he felt daily, and then she’d realize it wasn’t the same thing at all because if at any point she’d felt uneasy, she knew he would have pulled away.

He didn’t have that.

He stroked once, twice, and she felt the muscles in her jaw tensing, her breath lodging in a point in the centre of her chest, nails clenching in his back. “What do you want?” he asked, moving again and _ohfuck_ bottoming out, she felt their hips grinding together, another bruise for her that she wanted, a mark of him, and she knew what he thought she’d say because she knew what she wanted and almost couldn’t think of anything other than that.

She didn’t say that though. “You,” she whispered, her voice catching, and with none of the fogginess the compulsion left in her tone. He looked startled. “I just want to wake up next to you and know you’re safe and not going anywhere.”

“Oh, Emily,” he said huskily, the dark eyes gone and replaced with hazel, and his arms wrapped around her, pulling her close even as he rolled over the edge and shuddered into his own orgasm. “Come with me,” he gasped, his breath catching, and it was supposed to be a command but it wasn’t, the compulsion gone, but she did anyway. She fell apart in his arms and both their eyes were shut; she could feel her a dampness on his cheek that wasn’t just her tears, and she desperately tried to pretend that he’d meant for her to go with him when he left, and not to stay without him.

Her orgasm was unsatisfying and stuttering, his wasn’t much better, and he shattered, crying silently, and she numbly reflected that she’d tried to show him the agency he used to have, and instead just taunted him with what he’d lost.

“I love you,” she said helplessly, and he shook harder.

All the magic in the world, and she couldn’t fix this.

 

* * *

 

He lay on his back staring at the roof, his expression closed off. One of her arms slung across his belly, she watched the rise and fall of his chest, the only sign he was alive and not some kind of statue.

“You can’t do that again,” he said finally, his voice numb.

“Sex?” she teased, keeping her tone light and sliding closer to him, wrapping herself around him like she could hold him together with the force of her heart. “Or deactivating the rune?”

“Both,” he replied shortly. “And slipping into my mind—you don’t need to see that. You—I—need you to be separate from that. Clean.” His tone wobbled on the final word, and she felt him shudder under her arm. That was how he saw himself, she realized sickly. Unclean. Sullied. She’d seen the track marks on his under, red and angry under the slick gold. He knew she’d seen them. His shame was almost palpable.

“It’s the only way we’re going to find you,” she said, keeping her voice steady and firm. “You can’t tell us anything, they’ve ensured that. I might see something useful.”

“You won’t,” he murmured, and his gaze darkened. “You’ll just see filth.” Those darkened eyes flickered to her face and studied her, a shadowed version of the first time they’d looked at each other across the bullpen. “Promise me you won’t do it again, and I’ll come back to you as often as I can. You’ll be able to see I’m alive—without seeing things that will destroy the memory of me.”

“You’re isolating yourself from us,” she snapped. “This way I can be there for you. Don’t take that away from us, Spence.”

Long fingers threaded through hers, clinging tightly to her. “There was a study done at UCLA,” he said, musing. “That social isolation, loneliness, it triggers the same regions of the brain that react to physical pain. It floods the brain with cortisol and doesn’t allow it to subside.” She counted his heartbeats under her arm as they sped up. _Tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump-tha-thump._ “I’ll come back to you, okay? I’ll let you be there for me. Just… not with me. Not with _them_.”

It would make it harder to find him. It would make it _impossible_ She didn’t have a choice, though. She couldn’t let him be alone.

“Okay,” she said, and prayed she wasn’t making the wrong choice.

 

* * *

 

He left behind a dirty mug, an ache between her legs, and sheets that smelled of them together. She walked in her room once he was gone to find that he’d also left her a message.

The demon-killing knife placed carefully on her bedside cupboard, almost obscured by the shirt he’d used to pick it up to stop it from touching his skin. Under it, the letter from him she’d been avoiding opening, now with numbers scrawled under her name. Random digits, with no rhyme or reason to them.

> _Emily._
> 
> _9780990342786 0990342786_
> 
> _97, 36_

_“Perhaps ask Garcia? She can search them in a heartbeat.”_ Sergio leapt up onto the bed, his paws sinking into the linen. _“Read it, Emily. He may have encoded something else in there that will help us find him.”_

“Unlikely,” she muttered, glaring at the knife and everything it represented. She slid the letter into her bag. Perhaps at work…

She shoved the knife back into the drawer and went to have a shower.

 

* * *

 

As it turned out, some mysteries weren’t so impossible to solve.

“It’s the ISBN number of a book,” Garcia said instantly, tapping the numbers into her database and smacking the enter key with a satisfied smile. “Annnd it’s… oh. Big word. I can’t pronounce that for the life of me.”

Emily leaned over and peered at the screen. “ _Pseudomonarchia Daemonum_ ,” she read fluently, a foreboding sense of ‘oh shit’ settling on her shoulders. “It’s… an old book on demons. A very old book. Original copies are almost impossible to find; this is a translated version.”

“Hierarchy of demons,” Garcia read slowly, spinning in her chair so that her knees knocked against Emily’s legs. “What do we tell the bosses? They won’t like that he came to see you. Oooh… Emily, you’re supposed to have locked him out. We all did—we had to retract our invitations.” 

Emily ignored her. That was a problem for future Emily to worry about. “The numbers underneath must be the page and passage he wants us to read—can you pull it up?”

Behind her bright glasses, Garcia looked worried. “Yes. Maybe. Translated, certainly. The original? Most likely that’s a nope. You’d probably have to contact libraries, see if they have slides or copies. Em, you ignored my question. What do we tell Hotch?”

_“Bring up the translated copy,”_ Sergio demanded. _“We will be able to tell from that if we need the original. It will likely be a bastardized version, I have little faith in the translators to have retained the feel of the original.”_

The soft growl of irritation in Garcia’s throat didn’t bode well either for them, or the way the screens flickered with her mood, but Emily didn’t know how to answer a question she wasn’t even sure she knew the answer to yet. Telling Hotch she’d seen Reid was fine. Him finding out that they’d slept together? That she had every intention of keeping that going? That probably wasn’t going to go over so well. There was a dark glow of obsession in his eyes these days. He’d want him locked out, he’d want to set traps or bindings near her home to catch him, and her spell was nowhere near ready. Nor was her dark magic—she needed time, time that seemed determined to evade her.

This was buying them time, but she couldn’t tell them that.

“Here,” Garcia said after a second of focusing on her screens. “Blah, blah, demons, demons, ahh here’s a bit. Ew, creepy. _‘In the summoning of the incubus lies the folly of man in believing that his heart can be true; for neither man nor demon can truly be bound unless the heart is given in the whole, and woven within the summoning.’_ And then the section ends. There’s hardly anything on incubi at all, just this passage and a short section on weather magic and… is that picture even physically possible? Woah.”

Emily squinted at the rough rendition of the woodcut depicting an incubus and a human doing… something. She wasn’t entirely sure all the bits were in the right places for what she thought they were doing. “I have no idea, ask Reid. That’s not helpful at all.”

Garcia made a choking kind of laugh, and then her eyes filled with tears. For a moment, they’d almost forgotten.

_“The original then,”_ Sergio mused. _“That will be bothersome to acquire.”_

“Even his clues are fucking annoying,” Emily snapped, pressing her knuckles into her eyes to stave off the headache brewing. A sniff nearby indicated that Garcia was quickly pulling herself together while Emily wasn’t looking. “It’s a wonder they haven’t given him back out of sheer irritation.” She slipped open the envelope, pulling the paper out between shaking fingers. It was time. Garcia’s outraged noise was almost worth the surge of guilt for making the joke.

Almost.

 

* * *

 

> _Emily,_
> 
> _No matter what happens, wherever I go, you’ll always be home to me._
> 
> _If this goes wrong, if we lose each other at the end of it all, know that I knew love with you and know it still. Know that never once have I forgotten that. And know that every day that I still breathe, I still love. That won’t change._
> 
> _With everything I was and might be again,_
> 
> _Spencer._

 

* * *

 

More training. More cases. More calling libraries and being sent to other libraries, which directed them onto private collections, who ignored their phone calls for a week until Emily told Rossi, and he called down the wrath of himself on them. Things moved a little quicker after that, although Rossi began to eye her suspiciously when he saw the book she was after, and Hotch had never really believed her explanation that Reid had waylaid her on the subway _._

Reid visited like he said he would. He answered no questions that were helpful and every moment he spent not wrapped up in her, he spent reading the books on her shelves hungrily like the words on the page were his one link to sanity. She made sure there were always new ones there, even when she was out of town on cases. He didn’t lose weight again, nor did he put it on. He kept his glamour on. He didn’t limp or show up high and, when they slept together, he said nothing about the bruises that painted his body. There weren’t many. He was coping, somehow.

Hotch was almost shot, twice. She’d say that it was just a run of bad luck, but Rossi stormed around and she worried that she wasn’t the only one being reckless.

She didn’t slip into Reid’s mind, she’d promised she wouldn’t, but sometimes her dreams took on an odd air to them that left her shivering and cold, even when she piled the blankets on. A dream of a dark-haired boy in a stable, watched by a woman with a permanently creased frown of worry and blonde roots showing in her own black bob. Hankel scratching at his arms and shouting at nothing. JJ checking her mail, shuffling through the junk. He was watching them, but they already knew that. JJ joked about it being kind of comforting, knowing he was there somewhere even though she couldn’t see him, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes.

One more month passed. Later, if Emily was asked to recall if there was any moment in this hellish experience that could almost be described as ‘normal’, she’d point to this month. Just this month.

Then, time decided to stop playing around and everything seemed to happen at once.

They found the book.

They found him.

And then everything went to fucking shit.

 

* * *

 

> _Magus Prentiss,_
> 
> _The requested passage from ‘Pseudomonarchia Daemonum’. You are correct in that it was omitted from the translated version, although for what reason I am unsure. I have also enclosed a translation that we had in our records, although the accuracy of it is questionable. Normally, we would have a translation by the species listed, but as you know, that in this case is impossible._
> 
> _Give my regards to Magus Rossi._
> 
> _Nikolan Dimarco, Arch-Magus Libris_
> 
> _Library of Congress_
> 
> **_‘Stultitia hominis vocatio consistit in credendo Incubi corde esse verum ; et non homo, nec potest quidem daemonem tenetur , nisi qui in toto corde , et in citare textum ._ **
> 
> **_Evertendam implicat cordis et infirmitas humani generis , ex quo maius hoc genus daemoniorum, ita verisimile est , ut incidam afoul ; sume tibi essentiam circuli bestiae et eos qui intra iacet usque relati comminuetur - fractione quoque tollere illa et qui praesidio fruuntur.’_ **
> 
> **‘In the summoning of the incubus, lay man’s folly, believing that his heart can be true; for neither man nor demon can truly be bound, unless the heart is given in the whole, hence woven within the summoning.**
> 
> **Subversion of heart involves the weakening of the human ties; this greater class of demon is so likely to fall afoul; taketh unto your circle the essence of those that love the beast and within their magics lay the point of breaking** **—and within breaking will is the destruction of the protection those enjoy.’**

 

* * *

 

“How legit is this book?” Morgan asked, flicking through the pages of the translated version. “I mean, listen to this; ‘ _appearing as a hart, with a fiery tail, he lied in everything, except he be brought up within a triangle; being bidden, he taketh angelical form, he speaketh with a hoarse voice, and willingly make love between man and woman.’_ Half of it barely makes sense. A hart? Since when has Reid been a deer?”

“Aww, do you think he actually has a tail? That’s adorable!” Garcia held her hands up to her mouth to cover a smile, and Emily had to fight the desire to laugh. The past month had showed her she _could_ laugh again. They all would, very soon, because this was so close to being fucking over, she could taste it.

“Hope that it is legit,” JJ said thoughtfully. Hotch made a disapproving noise from where he was pacing, his face taut with stress. He’d taken the news that their protection from Reid had been subverted from the beginning worse than any of them. A stark reminder that Jack’s belongings had been taken along with theirs.

JJ continued, eyes glittering. “Foyet’s made a massive mistake. He tried to be clever—he used our magic to weaken Reid, knowing he wouldn’t be able to shatter it. So when he tried to surge the circle, it caused a backlash that weakened him—great plan, except now my magic is a part of his bounds.”

“Locked away from you,” Rossi said, straightening from his careful perusal of the photocopied version of the translation. “Hardly useful.”

Her blonde hair caught the light as she flicked it back over her shoulder, smiling coldly. “Clearly Foyet didn’t pay enough attention to the nature of elves. Our magic can’t be distorted. If he’s used it in Reid’s bindings, if it’s still there, it’s still _mine_.”

There was an inhale of breath from Rossi on her left even as Emily turned to JJ, her mind racing. “Could you call it? If given the chance? And how much would it weaken the overall spell?”

“Prentiss,” Rossi growled, warningly. She ignored him. JJ looked disconcerted with the sudden tension between the two. “I told you to drop it.”

“I can absolutely call it,” JJ said slowly, eyes ticking between her and Rossi warily. “As to how much it would weaken them, I have no idea. I don’t know how much of it is mine—your magic is still in it, which would be… powerful, considering your… emotions. Although…”

“Gideon’s may have died with him,” Hotch finished, mouth twitching ever so slightly in something almost like triumph. “This explains why… Prentiss, when you saw Reid he was well? Or perhaps not well, but, better than he had been?” She nodded slowly. “The bindings are weakening. If we retake JJ’s essence, and without Gideon’s power, their hold on him will be tenuous.”

“Prentiss had an idea,” Rossi said suddenly, to her shock, his voice reluctant. “That perhaps if we could hold him in a binding circle, she could pull him into herself in the reverse of what she did to him, and surge the bounds with enough magic to—”

“Short circuit the shit outta them! That’s fantastic!” Garcia whirled, setting the plasma buzzing. Electricity almost audibly crackled in the air, and Emily could see JJ’s hair lifting when one of Garcia’s hands moved too close to the blonde strands. “We could have him home by Thanksgiving!”

“I didn’t think it was possible,” Rossi admitted, setting Emily’s heart to a frantic beat of tense excitement in her chest. “I’ve surged bounds before, and it’s tricky and deadly to misstep. But, if JJ is correct, we may actually have a chance.”

“And a chance is exactly what we need,” Hotch agreed. “Garcia and JJ, delve into archives and see if this has been done before. JJ, pay close attention to any that mention elvish magic being tied in the binding. The more information we have, the better. Everyone else, we have two raids coming up close to home. They’re not promising, neither have any sign of necromantic or demonic activity, but Strauss wants two of us on site at each with the SWAMT team. Rossi, you and Morgan take the Mitchell House in Bedford—there’s a family cemetery plot on the grounds, although the house burnt down in two thousand twelve. Prentiss, you’re with me to Loudoun County.”

Head buzzing with possibilities, she didn’t even consider for a second that they’d find anything. Not that close to home. He’d have told her if he was that close—or she’d have been able to tell, somehow.

Emily had always hated being wrong.

 

* * *

 

None of the Magical Tactics mages picked up anything odd in the premises. Emily didn’t recognise the area, not from the outside anyway.

They took two steps into what appeared to be an empty church, and Reid bolted upright from his sprawled position on the floor and stared blankly at them, barely a foot away.

“Hotch?” he said, blinking. Emily’s heart skipped and, judging from the way Hotch’s skin had instantly paled with shock, his had too.

Silence. One beat of it. Two. Her eyes met Reid’s, brown meeting hazel. He blinked again.

Everything moved very quickly after that. There was a whistle, tinny and unmistakable, but she didn’t register it until after the bullet hurtled past her. She didn’t see if it hit him, but he ducked back, fell, vanished behind a sagging pew.

“Don’t shoot him,” she screamed, and she could hear Hotch echoing her shout, both distracted, both failing to be aware. Her, the air tightening around her and every synapse in her brain misfiring at once as she tried to see him, see blood, see any sign of where the bullet had gone. Hotch, his voice hoarse, shouting that Reid was friendly, _he’s friendly, weapons down!_

A brush against her mind that became a spike that slammed into her brain; Reid panicking and failing to steady his thoughts. _“I’m okay, it missed,”_ he sent in a rush, along with a veritable torrent of emotions: fear, shock, hope, _panicpanicpanic._

A swirl of shadow and Foyet was there, slashing towards Hotch’s unprotected side. Emily wasn’t close enough and SWAMT weren’t fast enough. Shouts, gunfire that rattled uselessly against protective spells; there was a grunt of pain and Hotch staggered, almost fell. Emily activated her runes in a smooth movement, pushing them out around her in a circular shield, and sprinting towards her fallen boss.

She was too far away.

Blood speckled the ground under him, and Foyet readied another strike, even as the tactical mages moved in. He was only going to have the chance to strike once more before he lost the chance to escape, but that was all he needed.

But there was a blur of movement and Foyet’s next attack spun wildly off to the side, thrown off course by a clatter of wings as Reid hurled himself bodily at the both of them. Another whirl of magic, this time metallic smelling and cold—Reid’s magic—and the two vanished. With a shout that didn’t even sound like him, Hotch pelted after them. Emily sprinted in his footsteps, runes ready and suddenly horrendously aware that they’d just sunk the proverbial ship and all the rats were fleeing.

They’d fucking lose him.

There was a cry of triumph as they burst outside, and found themselves faced with two tactical mages and the squirming Hankel, rope-like magic pinning him down. A weight Emily hadn’t even known she’d been bearing lifted slightly. Even without Reid, even without Foyet, this was the end of it. Through Hankel, they could summon Reid. With them both, they could unbind him.

She almost smiled.

“Piece of cake,” one of the mages said smugly, even as Hotch ignored them to scan the skyline, spinning in place, desperate to see any sign of their quarry. Out of all of them, he wouldn’t rest until it was Foyet in chains.

Emily realized what was going to happen moments before it did.

How foolish to let their guard down around a necromancer in a burial ground.

The wight burst out from the ground under Hankel’s feet, his eyes gleaming a sour green as he controlled it. Lunging with knotted hands, it grabbed one of the mages in a close embrace, and the two toppled over. They had seconds to react and only Emily was quick enough, but she was still too far away to save the mage as teeth bit through the flesh of his face. His shriek changed to a groan, and ended in a wet rattling gargle that would haunt them all for months to come even as she threw an _ignis_ rune out and the wight’s dry skin burst into blue flames that devoured the spell animating him.

Hotch turned and stared, his gun in his hands, useless against the undead, and he screamed, “Don’t!” for no discernible reason that she could fathom, until it happened.

The mage’s partner, reeling and pale with grief, put a bullet in Hankel’s skull. Almost in slow motion, he slumped, blood and bone and brain painting the headstone behind him. Dead. Something in her mind, something she was hardly even aware of, tore away and fell with him.

When the necromancer died, his bound demon was fated to die with him.

“No,” groaned Hotch, lowering his gun. In his eyes, her nightmare.

“Hotch,” she murmured, a statement, a question. A plea. She reached out for Reid with her mind.

Nothing. Where he had been, emptiness remained.

“Hotch,” she repeated, her voice solid and real and without a single tremor even though the world wobbled under her. Hotch said nothing.

He just shook his head and closed his eyes and she watched the last of his hope die.


	12. Control

“I thought we discussed this.” Rossi’s voice couldn’t be dryer, almost dripping with disapproval. Emily ignored him, continuing to painstakingly scrape the rune into the bank of the river with the sharp edge of a shovel, sweat dripping down her back. It was almost done. Hours of backbreaking tedium in the sun, the reek of something rotting nearby in her nose, her muscles shaking with exertion and hands cramping and slippery, blisters stinging, struggling to move the tool through the gluggy mud. All to make this wide rune, about an arm’s-length across, one she wasn’t even sure would work.

Almost done.

Well, theoretically. In practise, it was a goddamn fucking mess of soil and rocks and grass roots, and her epigraphy teacher would have shot her if he’d seen it.

“Prentiss.” His voice again, closer this time. Her grip tightened on the handle. _Fuck off David fucking Rossi,_ she thought furiously. “ _Prentiss_.” The shovel skipped on another rock, cutting one of her careful lines in half.

“Fuck,” she hissed under her breath, pausing. She’d have to redo that entire line.

Before she could begin, a hand grabbed the shovel, over her fingers, tugging it gently away. “Emily,” he said finally, and she almost jumped backwards into his torso from shock. “Stop.”

“Why?” she asked with a dangerous calm that would have sent Morgan or Sergio piss-bolting for the safety of the car if they’d heard it. “I’m clearly busy, Rossi. I need to work out the design. I’ve worked in binding and calm. I need it to sit invisible until I trigger it as well…” She trailed off, examining one of the loops on the right side. It was slightly too big; it would drag her power to one side and leave the other half of the circle weakened.

“We don’t even know if he’s alive,” Rossi said quietly. Her fingers slipped off the shovel, and he pulled it away.

“Shut up,” she said with a snap in her tone. “He’s alive. I’d know if he wasn’t.” He wasn’t fucking _dead_. Not after everything they’d gone through.

She reached for the shovel, and he stepped out of reach. _Fine_ , she thought furiously. _Fine. Be like that._ She stamped a booted heel on the rim of her rune, gathering her magic and propelling it towards the circle, reaching out with her mind for the bubbling power of the river. It took a few seconds for her to recognise Rossi’s magic curling around hers and moving with it in perfect synchronicity, examining the rune with a weary curiosity.

_“It’s lopsided,”_ he commented. She scowled, mentally as well as physically, and lobbed the irritation at him. He ignored it. _“You’re not going to have time to draw a physical rune up if it comes down to it. You need to rethink that aspect.”_

_“I’ll draw it beforehand.”_

_“This isn’t Scooby-Doo, Prentiss.”_ The exhaustion was gone now, replaced with a crackling temper that he rarely showed. _“He’s not going to follow a pre-set path and stand all nice and polite on the X so you can trap him, and he’s not going to go down quietly. You need to build the defence, add offence, less focus on the calming.”_

_“He’ll hurt himself.”_

_“Yeah. And if he gets out, he’ll hurt you and everyone around you.”_ His presence vanished, and his next words were spoken. “Alright fine, he’s not dead. If that’s what you need, we’ll run with that, despite Hankel being two weeks cold and without a sign of him. Hey, that’s probably the biggest evidence of him being alive—if he was dead, we’d have a body by now.” If he felt her flinch at that, he didn’t show it. “But let’s not get too cosy with our assumptions. If he’s not dead, it’s because Foyet’s holding his leash and without Hankel to hold Foyet back, we’re gonna have a fight on our hands. If you have to hurt him to save him, you don’t hesitate.”

“Instead of lecturing me, why don’t you help?” she snapped finally, turning on him. He cocked his head, the expression oddly Reid-like for a moment, and a fist closed cruelly around her heart.

“What do you think I’ve been doing?” he asked softly.

 

* * *

 

If Emily had to pick one thing she hated the most these days, it would be the empty space on the wall of the sixth floor. Lines and lines of agents lost in the line of duty and an empty space where everyone expected him to be one day. She hated it. She hated it so fucking much that every day she stopped in front of it and contemplated pressed her hand against the paint and burning her hatred straight through into the drywall. Almost like it could sense her thoughts, the building rumbled with discontent under her feet, warningly.

She stepped back and turned away from that slow threat and the empty space and walked to her lonely desk in the sea of familiar faces, the only one who still thought he was coming home. Sometimes, she saw something that almost looked like relief on her co-workers’ faces, and she wondered if somewhere in a drawer in some higher up’s desk lay the frame with his face in it, waiting to be triumphantly hung in that space.

No one said it, but they were searching for a body now, and they almost seemed pleased.

She seethed.

 

* * *

 

They were on the jet, Emily laying on the couch facing the backrest, shutting the pitying expressions of her teammates out. A thump echoed as Rossi slapped his book onto the table and stood with a loud, “Enough.” Silence, and she itched with the desire to roll over and stare at him, no doubt exactly what everyone else was doing.

“Dave?” Hotch asked quietly, his voice hoarse. He sounded tired. Emily considered shifting off the couch, letting him take it. He needed it more, and she couldn’t sleep anyway.

“You don’t even know if he’s dead,” Rossi snapped, and _now_ Emily rolled over and glared at him with all the force that his hypocrisy deserved. He avoided her gaze, looking instead at Hotch and Morgan, both sitting together. JJ’s blonde head bobbed up from the other side of the chair, looking from one to the other, eyebrow raised.

“The evidence suggests—” Hotch began, and Rossi almost stomped over to her, holding his hand out. She stared at it.

“Shut up, Aaron,” he said loudly. “If you want to be a fatalist about this, fine, but stop dragging the rest of us down into your self-pitying spiral. It’s bad enough that Prentiss has been trying to murder us all with her, admittedly impressive, range of glares. I don’t need you shoving us all into depressive funks alongside her.” There was a spluttering sound from the chairs that could have been either Morgan or Hotch, but she wasn’t sure because she was busy studying the hand that he was offering her and trying to decide if he had some sort of ulterior motive. “Let’s solve it,” he said quietly. And then louder, “We have the ability to find out for sure, and we’re all just too hesitant to do so. Prentiss, let me help you.”

Oh.

She had promised him she wouldn’t. But that was before.

No one else said anything to stop her, and so she took Rossi’s hand and the power he offered her and threw herself into the dark in search of their missing friend.

 

* * *

 

Shadows. That was all she knew for what felt like an eternity, the barest trace of Rossi tethering her to herself. And then, something pulled her in, and she knew pain as well.

She opened her eyes and the shadows became darkness that shifted, thick with the smell of rats and broken by the scrabbling noise of something trying to claw its way out of the hole it had become trapped in. Weaving herself into a tiny thread, she inched her way into his mind, hidden. He didn’t react, unaware of her intrusion.

Alive. She felt a burning relief tempered with the smug knowledge of being right.

He shifted, stretching his wings out to ease cramping muscles, and sneezed as the air caught in his throat and nose. It was so commonplace and normal she almost laughed. Alive and _sneezing_. She’d never been happier to hear someone sniffling grossly. Then, she extended a small trace of herself further into his mind, just the most tentative finger, determined to ensure he hadn’t suffered unduly for Hankel’s abrupt demise, and the relief vanished like a bubble popping.

If Hankel had been a thin cobweb draped over his mind, Foyet was a creeping vine; she could feel raw scarring where Hankel had been ripped away, traced over his thoughts and his feelings, the kind of light scarring that faded with time. But now, oily tendrils had sunk hooks and suckers deep into his core, twining so thickly around him that she couldn’t even find where they would begin to untwine them again. And, beyond that, a boiling liquid heat that started in his chest and bubbled in his lungs and made every breath rattle as it worked its way up his spine.

_“Spence,”_ she called, reaching for him. He shook his wings, drawing them back in tightly, and sneezed again. There was pain there, in stripes across his back and legs, and every time he sneezed they could both feel a slight trickle of wet on his skin from the source of the pain. _“Spence!”_ She tried again, extending her reach and jabbing.

His thoughts drifted foggily, slow and calm, vacant. She couldn’t even get a taste of his emotions, just the merest suggestion of grief. A barrier between her and him. She couldn’t even begin to push through that fog to reach him. She’d been wrong previously when she’d thought he was high. That was coming down. _This_ was high. She drew back and followed his gaze as he studied the small room he was in, a broken door leaning drunkenly in the doorway and letting a thin line of dusty light in. The light glinted off of the barest hint of a discarded bottle in pile of fabric that could be a coat, but she couldn’t tell. His fingers rolled over something in his hand that also caught the light, and she had no desire to know if her suspicion over what it was was correct.

She left him there in that cold dark room and clung to his survival like a lifeline as she slipped back through the darkness towards Rossi and her team.

And opened her eyes in the jet with four pairs of eyes watching her attentively.

“He’s alive,” she said, smiling truly. She didn’t need to tell them about the heat or the dark or the glitter of light on glass, because there was only one important thing to cling to. “He’s _alive_.”

 

* * *

 

She reached into the fridge for a carton of milk, half listening to an elderly couple squabbling nearby over whether they should buy brown rice or white. Someone stepped up close behind her, slipped a hand over her mouth, and almost got a hole blasted through them from the _ignis_ rune she called up in a panic.

“Emily,” Spencer murmured into her ear, and she elbowed him in the gut and pulled herself out of his grasp, turning on him with her hands shaking and the milk almost slipping out of her grasp.

“What the fuck,” she snarled, unable to rein in the shock. “Reid, seriously!” _Alive, alive, alive_ , part of her mind screeched in delight, while the other half took a deep, steadying breath and tried not to note how filthy he was, or wonder how he’d gotten in the supermarket without _someone_ stopping him.

He jittered backwards, feet skittering on the floor and hand twitching sporadically against his side in a frenetic beat. She met his eyes, bottomless and echoing; hazel pools with the barest pinprick pupils visible, and her heart sank. He was absolutely off his damn face, and every part of her instincts that were still sensible and logical told her to back the hell away from him. Behind him, she could see a cashier looking over, two men in blue next to her, pointing their way.

Wings flared, his glamour forgotten, hair growing out shaggy and matted. Coat sleeves hung over his hands, overly long, the ends dirty. There was no sign of his previous attempts at remaining clean. She reached out for his hand, with half an idea of leading him out of here, sitting him in her car and calming him down, not entirely happy with the way he was twitching or the emptiness of his eyes.

He wrenched his hand back, then leaned forward, throat working busily and a muscle under his eye leaping. “He’s planning something,” he stammered, and stopped, shaking his head like a wet dog. She caught the scent of smoke, even as he rubbed at his sleeve. “Something bad, Em. Really bad. Please, please, stop him.” It hit her very suddenly that he wasn’t supposed to be here, standing in this grocery store in front of her, trying to tell her something he’d been ordered not to, and paying dearly for that.

“Is there a problem here, ma’am?” asked the police officer, walking up with his nostrils flaring, scenting. Garou. Shit. Behind him, his partner paced, cutting off Reid’s exit. She hoped Reid hadn’t noticed, but knew he had by the way his shoulders hunched, his mouth twisting into a hint of a snarl, a rat in a cage ready to lash out.

“No problem,” she said, grabbing at Reid with one hand and holding the other out to flash her credentials. They didn’t look calmed. _Get here,_ she thought angrily, as Reid backed away from her reaching hand. “We’re fine, we’re just leaving.”

“If all the world and love were young, and truth in every Shepherd’s tongue,” Reid babbled, carding shaking fingers through his hair, and turning to bare his teeth at the cop. The cop’s eyes narrowed, eyes glinting green, and everything was about to go to shit.

“Spencer,” she hissed, lunging and missing the rough fabric of his coat by inches. He kept going, rambling, lost to her.

“These pretty pleasures might me move, to live with thee, and be thy love,” he continued, one wing brushing against a display as he stumbled and sending bottles of shampoo clattering to the ground. “Time drives the flocks from field to fold, when Rivers rage and Rocks grow cold.” He shook again, his skin rippling, grabbing at his sleeve with one hand and yanking it up to claw at his arm. As soon as the gold came glinting into sight the cops reacted, just as Emily knew they would, and she was helpless to stop them.

“Thrall-bound!” one shouted, pulling a weapon, and the other shifted, becoming a looming wolf with brindled fur and snarling fangs. They didn’t tell him to freeze. They weren’t trained to, not with thralls. After all, everyone knew that thralls had no minds of their own, what was the point?

“FBI! Stand down!” she shouted, knowing there was no use. The wolf leapt and Reid snarled, lashing out with a bolt of _something_ that set her hair on end and made the bottle of milk abandoned at her feet crack and split, spilling one-percent over her shoes. Behind her, the rest of the display did the same, the fridge door shattering and icy milk sloshing to the floor. People screamed amid the sound of glass splintering.

The wolf yelped, paws skittering, and hit the ground. It was up again in moments, but Reid moved in a whirl of wings and hot, rushing air and vanished.

She reached for her cell even as the cops turned on her and dialled the number numbly.

“Prentiss,” Hotch answered shortly, sounding out of breath. He’d probably been jogging. “What’s wrong?”

“You might want to come here,” she said glumly, feeling milk dripping down her leg, the cops talking into their radios quickly. “We have a problem.”

 

* * *

 

Working out whatever Foyet had planned was sidelined by Bridgewater and one of those cases that left them all reeling. The flight home was silent, Morgan pacing and Hotch still looking green. Emily tried not to think about Ferrell’s proud, _“So is Tracey Lambert,”_ and the pot of stew disappearing down volunteers’ unknowing throats, her stomach warning her that dwelling on it was probably a terrible idea.

The laptop trilled, and Garcia appeared, peering out of the screen at them. “I found it!” she yelped, bouncing and cutting off her head with the top of the screen. “I was googling about and Prentiss, hon, you didn’t exactly give me a lot to work with, but I managed to get the footage from the store—and let me tell you, the opportunity for spilt milk jokes are _high_ —and I did some fiddling about, and now we mostly have our junior D-man’s lips in view, which means _what?_ _”_ Emily tried to follow the rambling trail of the tech-nymph’s thoughts and failed. Luckily, Hotch was used to it.

“You have the footage of Reid at the store?” he asked, leaning in. “Can you find out what he was saying, exactly?”

“Well, I’m good,” Garcia admitted, flushing, “but I’m not ‘lip reading through a fuzzy screen’ good. But I have a friend who absolutely is that good—he works at Georgetown. I can bounce over there in a heartbeat and have him have a squiz, if Strauss clears it.”

“I’m clearing it,” Hotch said firmly. “Do it, and let us know straight away what he says. The sooner we know what Reid was saying, the sooner we can start figuring out what Foyet is planning.”

“That’s if he’s planning anything,” Morgan said, eyes downcast. “Hotch, we have to consider that Reid might not have been saying _anything_. Emily said it herself—he was rambling, babbling. He might not have even known what he was saying. Reid in his right mind wouldn’t attack a cop.”

“Are you willing to take the chance that even Reid in his wrong mind isn’t smart enough to try and get a message to us?” Emily asked quietly. Morgan’s silence said it all.

“No!” squeaked Garcia, leaning close enough to the screen that her nose almost brushed it. “Derek, shh! He’s not crazy—he didn’t look crazy, just scared and…” She hesitated.

“He absolutely looked crazy,” Emily corrected gently. “But since when has he ever _not_ looked crazy? The kid wears odd socks and his watch over his sleeve, for crying out loud. We need to know what he was saying, beyond my hazy recollection.”

“Report back as soon as you have something,” Hotch said, and Garcia nodded, glanced at Morgan, then cut the connection. In the quiet that followed, Hotch looked grim. “Foyet left Hankel behind for a reason that day. If he’s feeling cornered, feeling rushed, he needs Reid completely under his control.”

“Five steps forward, and three back,” Rossi commented dryly, leaning back in his chair and opening his book again. “Anyone else feel like we’re running in circles?”

 

* * *

 

The jet was just beginning its descent into DC airspace when their cells all buzzed simultaneously. By the sharp gasp from JJ and Morgan’s horrified groan, they all received exactly the same text Emily did.

“Hotch,” Morgan said, his voice shaking with fear. “ _Hotch.”_

“Ring her,” Hotch replied, his own fingers tapping frantically at his cell, bringing it to his ear. “If she doesn’t answer, keep ringing. Rossi, get metro over there. Prentiss, as soon as we hit the ground we’re moving in.” His eyes snapped out the window, as though coaxing them faster to the ground. “Strauss? I need SWAMT to Georgetown—Foyet is going after one of ours.”

Emily glanced down at the text again, feeling sick, guilt congealing in her gut. If she had recognised the poem. If she had stopped Reid. If she had done anything other than let Garcia walk straight to Foyet. But she hadn’t.

And now they were going to pay for that.

Their cells buzzed again. When Emily opened her inbox, the two messages stood lined up one after the other, mocking her with her helplessness.

**Penelope:** **We worked out what he was saying. Em was right, it was a poem, ‘The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd’. He’s coming after me. I can’t get through the network back home, it’s down. Guess he’s already here. I’ll do what I can to hold him off.**

**Penelope:** **I love you guys. Don’t blame Spence.**

“Oh god, no,” Morgan moaned. “Hotch, man, she’s not answering.”

Emily tapped out two messages, both pleading. Both, she knew, would remain unanswered.

**To Penelope:** **Think of everything he’s done to your family, Pen, and kick his fucking ass. We’re coming. Just keep fighting till we get there.**

**To Spencer:** **Please don’t hurt her. I know you’re still in there. Don’t let him do this to you.**

Hadn’t they already lost enough?

 

* * *

 

One good thing came of this day: Emily would never again doubt Penelope Garcia’s abilities.

An entire wing of Georgetown burned. Emily wasn’t sure if Garcia had done it or her attacker, but the air reeked of fried electrics and acrid smoke. Students gathered in tight clusters, faces wide with fear and shock. Mages scurried about, trying to quell the fires. A gurney with their tech nymph on it was being pushed towards a waiting ambulance, a singed looking professor hurrying after it. Morgan’s feet barely touched the ground as he sprinted over there. Emily breathed easier as a blonde head appeared, trying to crane upwards to look for them, even as the paramedics pushed her back down.

“Thank god,” JJ murmured, before following Emily over there at a jog.

The paramedics’ gloved hands were pressing down on a soggy patch of red that seared Emily’s vision accusingly. “Single calibre round to the chest,” one of them said shortly, glaring at the panicked Morgan. “We need to get her into surgery.”

She was fighting Morgan’s hands, trying to get the oxygen mask off. She won. “It wasn’t Reid,” she lied, her breath wheezing in wet sounding gasps around the hole in her chest. “It wasn’t him, please.” She fell back, lips blue, and Emily swallowed. She’d be okay. She was a fighter—one look at the chaos around them proved that.

“I’m going with her,” Morgan said numbly, following the gurney and leaving them standing there helplessly. The professor hovered by them, eyes flickering from one blue glowing palm to another.

“She probably saved those students lives,” he said mildly, nodding to a pale group of students clustered by a police cruiser. “When he came after her, she didn’t run. She triggered every fire alarm in the place and got the students out—and then she led him on a merry chase indeed. Led him away from anyone who could get caught up. She could have escaped if she wasn’t so focused on that.”

“The person who did this,” Rossi asked, because none of the rest of them seemed inclined to. “What did he look like?”

The man shuddered. When he finally answered, his voice shook: “A monster.”

 

* * *

 

It was cliché to say that someone looked dwarfed by the hospital bed in which they lay, but in Garcia’s case it was absolutely true. Emily walked into the room to find her tech nymph a small shape under the covers, drained by her wound and her distance from the building she was attuned to, and quailing back from the two people facing off over her. Hotch stood between the bed and Strauss, his shoulders square and face coolly calm. It was somewhat soothing to see him looking so _him_ , and Emily paused in the doorway to watch.

“We need to know, Aaron,” Strauss said, shifting uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, but the sooner we know what we’re facing, the better.”

“She needs to recover,” Hotch retorted, “not be interrogated in her hospital bed.”

Emily stepped closer to the bed. A cool hand slipped out from under the covers and brushed their fingertips together, Garcia smiling weakly up at her from behind eyes that glistened with tears. Her mouth wobbled, and Emily took her hand and squeezed. Neither of their bosses paid attention to them.

“If Dr. Reid is an active threat, that information needs to be updated immediately,” Strauss was saying. “With Hankel gone—”

“I told him to,” Garcia cut in, her voice a lot steadier than the tears slipping down her face suggested. Emily watched Hotch as his shoulders slumped. “I told him to shoot me. He was hurting, he was fighting it so hard it was hurting him, so I let him do it. Please, ma’am, it wasn’t his fault. He’s not a threat, I made sure…”

“You made sure?” Strauss said gently. “I heard, Miss Garcia. You went above and beyond to ensure the safety of the staff and students, and you will be commended for that bravery. But you must see past the blindness of your affection for him—no one but you was hurt, not because of his restraint, but because you made sure they weren’t. I’m sorry, but action must be taken. This changes how we respond to him.” She nodded to Hotch and to Emily, smiled sadly at Garcia, and left.

“You had to answer her, Penelope,” Hotch said finally, softly. “Don’t feel guilty for that. You did wonderfully.”

“I lied,” Garcia replied, her voice a choked whisper, and now she actually was sobbing. “I lied to her, Hotch. Whether I told him to or not… he would have done it anyway. He didn’t even hesitate. Oh god, what has Foyet done to him?” And she was gone, her breath coming out in ragged, choked gasps that must have hurt the stitches on her chest.

Emily wasn’t the hugging type, but she wrapped her arms around her anyway and drew the hysterical nymph close. “We’re so goddamn proud of you,” she said firmly, hearing the door open and Morgan entering. “Every one of us.”

Garcia sniffed loudly, but her next words were whispered and for Emily alone. “Whatever wild crazy plan you and Rossi have been cooking up, now might be a good time to do it. I don’t think he has much time left.”

 

* * *

 

She was right.

Sergio sat silently in her lap as Hotch reluctantly pressed the button on the plasma and pulled up the photos and cases that they’d been waiting seven months to hit their desks. They all wore the same face, they all carried this weight. Because they failed their friend, because they hadn’t brought him home, these people had died.

And even if they saved him now, they’d never change this.

April Tanner from Charlotte, North Carolina. Seventeen. Killed while walking home from school. Her parents insisted the watch she wore wasn’t her own. Thirteen stab wounds to her abdomen; judging from the depth and rage behind them, Foyet’s work. The killing wound was a jagged, stuttering slash across her throat. Hesitant. Reluctant. The troopers found vomit nearby. None of them said the obvious, but JJ couldn’t look at the picture without her breath wheezing slightly in a panic.

Fort Wayne, Indiana. John and Casey McMahon. Father and son. John had heard his son cry out and tried to save him. John had been an accomplished fire mage. John had died from heart failure caused by a massive electrical strike that had thrown him clear through a picket fence, metres from his son, dying of multiple stab wounds. They found a pen with ‘A. Tanner’ written wonkily on a label taped to the side tucked into Casey’s shirt pocket.

And Arlington, Virginia. Grace Harcourt. Grace’s long dark hair and dark eyes were the spitting image of a younger Emily, and she knew that everyone saw the resemblance and wondered if it was deliberate. Foyet’s final ‘fuck you’ to the man Spencer Reid had been. It was almost grotesquely symbolic. Grace was very likely the first. And, while Grace’s watch that her grandfather had left her was missing, pinned to her chest was a newspaper clipping, weathered and tattered and damning: _FBI Agent Taken! The hunt for Dr. Spencer Reid continues into the third week with no luck._

“The Bureau has listed Reid as an active threat,” Hotch said, his expression impossible to discern. “Our orders have changed.”

“Lethal force is to be applied on sight,” Rossi finished wearily. “And every law enforcement officer from us feds down to rent-a-cops are going to receive the exact same orders.”

It wasn’t personal pride that drove them now. Not Emily’s love for him, or JJ’s affection for her friend; not Morgan’s burning need for revenge, or Hotch’s vendetta against Foyet. None of that mattered anymore. Now, if it wasn’t them who reached him first, he wouldn’t be coming home at all.

At least, not alive.


	13. Heat

Emily was learning that time had a hazy kind of way of rushing away from them right as they all needed to stop and take a breath.

November was the month of Penelope’s recovery. It was the month of the ‘Missing’ posters being replaced with ‘Wanted’. It was four more dead bodies and Morgan using the word ‘devolving’ in reference to a man who’d once sat alongside them. It was Emily realizing that the time had come that Rossi had predicted; when the line was drawn and they found themselves on opposing sides. Strauss told them that, although Reid would always be remembered for the incredible strength he’d shown in retaining himself so far, they were required to take the kill shot if the opportunity presented itself, and not all of them argued.

Morgan looked away and Garcia saw him do it; Emily had never seen the tech nymph truly angry before then, but they all saw it that day. JJ was frosty to him for days, literally, the air chilling as soon as he walked into the room. Hotch made no comment. Rossi barely seemed to notice.

October, and Reid turned twenty-six. She woke up, remembered how fucking young he was, and didn’t cry. She brought him a present, a book with gilded pages and complicated diagrams of the muscular systems of dragons. When she ran her fingers over the pictures, the dragons shifted and flexed under her fingertips, and she could smell the memory of reptilian smoke. He’d have loved it. Nine dead now.

December. Christmas. She spent it alone with her cat and their memories. Then, she went out, drunk until the room spun, and went home with a stranger, trying to forget that she’d ever known his heart. No bodies. Either they hadn’t found them, or Foyet had some holiday spirit left. Maybe even serial killers let their slaves have December off.

She tried to reach his mind, but it was closed to her.

January. Happy fucking new year to them. Five more bodies. They let Hotch see Jack and Haley. He came back a week later with darkly shadowed eyes and the ghost of a smile on his face. He looked better at first and then worse as the memories of his son faded and left him alone once more. She was delivering a report to his desk when she saw the divorce papers. She wondered if Jack even recognised him anymore.

This was never going to be over, they knew that now.

Then came February.

One year.

 

* * *

 

Files hit her desk with a thump, and she almost fell off her chair in surprise. Rossi eyed them with an air of nonchalance that suggested they were budgetary and therefore dull. It took her two reads before she could fathom them.

> _ Referral for Second Circle – Application enclosed. _
> 
> _Apprentice: Magus Emily Prentiss runic incl. Magus Sergio felis_
> 
> _Maester: Magus David Rossi shadow incl. Magus Eris erebus in lieu Arch Magus Jason Gideon altum/deceased_

“Oh,” she said quietly.

“You were ready months ago, to be completely honest,” he replied. “Hell, Prentiss, if this dual-affinity idea of yours works, it’ll probably be enough to get you considered for first if you can whip up a dissertation on it. Saving bound demons without the necromancer? That’s a sentience rights breakthrough.”

She didn’t want to do this until he was home to see it happen. She signed the papers anyway. They’d see her in a week and she’d hang her diploma next to her bed at Sergio’s guidance. Her team went to her graduation. They left an empty chair in the centre of their group.

Life went on.

 

* * *

 

There was an explosion in March and Hotch should have been in it. According to every camera they saw, Hotch should have been killed. But he wasn’t. And he wasn’t saying why, except Emily walked past his hotel room and heard him arguing with Rossi.

“I know what I saw, Dave,” Hotch said in the overloud voice he’d acquired since the explosion that had killed Kate Joyner. None of them mentioned it, but they all made sure they stood on his left side if they needed to speak to him. “It wasn’t a stranger that stopped us getting in that car—it was _Reid_.”

“It was dark, and you said yourself you barely saw him. Think about this before you go bleating this to the team, to _her_. We have twenty-seven deaths with Foyet’s MO in the last six months, and fifteen of those show signs of Reid’s involvement. If you’re wrong, _and you could be_ , you’re going to give them hope where there might not be any!”

“He saved my life,” snapped Hotch in reply, and Emily closed her eyes and savoured those words. “Despite everything, he was there, and he saved my life. I’m not wrong.”

Emily clung to that.

 

* * *

 

Another body. Another woman with her life cut short. Emily stared at the photo and hatred mixed with horror in her heart until she wasn’t sure what she was feeling anymore, except that maybe Strauss was right that they shouldn’t be investigating this. She was by her desk alone, the file in front of her, and she felt lost.

“You know, this is why they don’t like it when teams become too close,” Rossi said, leaning on the desk and looking down at the file. “They self-destruct.”

“It’s hardly self-destructing if the thing that is destroying us has an external force,” she corrected snidely, closing the file with a snap and sealing away the life that had been so cruelly ended on nothing but a madman’s whim and quest for revenge.

“Oh?” Rossi tapped the file in with his fingers, the faintest hint of a rhythm on the wood. She tried to pick the beat out and failed. Either it was one she didn’t know, or he was shit at tapping. “Oh yes, I see. Because Foyet walked in here and told you to hate Morgan, or Hotch to let his guilt justify his family walking away from him. Silly me. And here I thought he just laid those paths out, giving us the choice of whether we stumbled merrily down them or not.”

“I don’t hate Morgan.” She didn’t. She just hated the way his face clouded when Reid was mentioned, or how he refused to talk of the man they’d known before and only referring to him in terms of the man they now hunted. She hated how he’d forgotten why they were doing this.

“You could have fooled me. I’m no saint, but generally when someone likes a person, they don’t twist the knife in at every opportunity. And you seemed determined to remind him at every chance possible of the fact that his friend is very likely beyond reach.”

Her heart skipped a long beat, leaving her stunned. “What?” she snapped, shoving her chair back and standing. “Why the hell would I do that? He’s not gone. I’m weeks away from completing the rune—you said it yourself, I’ve got a firm grasp of both affinities, I can cast without losing myself in either. I don’t believe he’s gone! Morgan—”

“Almost lost someone he loves dearly at Reid’s hands.” Rossi touched her arm, and there was something about his expression that left her cold. It was the kind of expression that preceded someone saying something that could never be unsaid. “We all have our loyalties, Prentiss. You would place Reid’s well-being before almost anyone else’s here. That’s human nature.”

“That’s not true,” she said, unsure of whether it was or not, really. Would she?

“Isn’t it? It is for the rest of us.” That serious expression shifted, became raw and open and unfamiliar. She felt ill seeing it. Like seeing her father cry, or her mother show open fear. “Aaron would burn us all to save his son. It would destroy him, but he would do it. Derek would protect Penelope to the end, because in her is the proof that he can do this job without becoming desensitized. Gideon, in protecting his student, found his demise. I find myself considering that if I was placed in that situation, I may react the same. When it comes to the people I care about, I would react irrationally—I _have_ reacted irrationally.”

It took a slow moment for the full impact of that final statement to sink in. “I never asked you to protect me,” she murmured, a lump in her throat choking the words and making them weak. She wanted to cough, but she couldn’t expose herself like that. “I don’t need protection.”

“Physically, no. You really, really don’t,” he said with a wry smile. “But that’s not how love works, Prentiss. It’s irrational, it’s illogical, and we’re all vulnerable to it. Even you. Even me. Don’t discount it—you might find that at the end of this all, it’s what brings us through safely to the other side.”

He left her considering that.

That night, she ran to catch up to Morgan as he left the building, and laid her hand on his arm. He stilled under her touch, tensing, preparing himself for another blow she hadn’t even been aware she was dealing him. He refused to remember who Reid had been, but maybe she’d been refusing to see how he’d been altered. Maybe they both needed to come to a middle ground.

“We’re still a team,” she said instead, and they left together.

 

* * *

 

In the end, it was Benjamin Cyrus that brought him back to her, but in the worst way possible. She put herself between the cult leader and JJ and hoped to god that this didn’t spiral even further out of control, but it always did.

“Which of you is the special agent?” he asked coldly, and his nostrils flared. She could learn to hate the enhanced abilities of shapeshifters. The air stunk of necromancy. Maybe once he was sane, but that was before he dabbled in the most destructive of magical arts. Why was it always necromancers that led them to their darkest moments?

“We’re not feds,” JJ tried, and Cyrus tilted his head to examine her closely.

“Surely it’s not you, little elf-kin,” he said slowly, baring his teeth in what would be a smile on anyone less dangerous. “Unless the government is so lax with their employee’s safety that they would send you here with that brat in your belly.”

It was like being dumped in an ice-cold shower, and Emily knew in that moment that there was no choice in how this day ended. By the resigned look on JJ’s face, she knew it too. Like Rossi said, they all had things they would do for the people they loved, no matter the cost. And, for her unborn child, JJ would see Emily take this fall. If Emily was being entirely fair, she couldn’t help but agree with that choice. And when it was over, if she was still alive, she was going to let her friend know just how much she disapproved of the elf not sharing _that_ particular nugget of information before allowing Emily to follow her into the field.

“It’s me,” Emily said quietly, and she saw the promise of pain in his smile and his hands as they reached for her. “I’m with the FBI.”

If only she’d had anyone other than JJ with her, maybe it would have ended differently.

They beat her, and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of screaming, except one of his mages was very good at causing pain and, in the end, she didn’t have a choice. She hoped JJ couldn’t hear, but she knew that was a false hope. She hoped JJ wouldn’t blame herself, and that was useless as well. She hoped JJ decided to rip this place apart with all the force of a winter storm, but she’d seen the iron weapons they carried and felt the pain their mages knew how to cast, and she knew that even an elf wouldn’t have a chance against their sheer numbers.

There was a place in her mind where the pain was less; she’d never noticed it before, but she saw it now and reached for it and

_“Emily?”_

_“Emily, get up.”_

_“They’ll kill you if you don’t.”_

_“If you die, what do I have to come home to?”_

_“Fine. But you won’t thank me for this. I know how much you hate being rescued.”_

found herself floating with the merest hint of someone familiar talking to her. By the end of it, she just wished that the men and women hurting her would die so she could stop screaming.

And then, they did.

She slumped to the ground and the screams suddenly weren’t hers; her runes helpless against the bindings they’d tied her with, her magic bound by iron. When she looked up again, the room was red and Cyrus stared back at her from his spot on the floor, never to rise again. A hand touched her forehead, brushed hair back, and left a sticky trail of something on her skin. When she tried to look up again to see who it was, her vision wavered and hazel eyes swam in and out of focus. Maybe she was dead, and he was finally there to welcome her home.

_“She’s in here,”_ said a voice that was once sweet and was now broken. _“You can get in now. The shields are down.”_

_“Emily!”_ Her cat. Her goddamn cat. She wanted to reach for him and she couldn’t. Paws on her cheek, a nose on her forehead, frantic purring, and the sluggish wash of his magic lapping at her injuries. _“Open your eyes, love. Your team is coming.”_

“Spencer,” she thought or maybe said, around a tongue that was thick and bloody.

A low chuckle and the hand touched her again. “Maybe a long time ago,” said the voice, out loud this time, “but he doesn’t wear that name these days.”

_“Leave now,”_ Sergio murmured, and she could hear heavy boots moving towards them. _“They will see the bodies, and you will die if you stay. Thank you for her life.”_

Maybe there was more said. She didn’t know. She found darkness and it welcomed her.

 

* * *

 

No one spoke of the bodies removed from that room.

Sergio was saved the task of helping her move around the apartment with limbs that were too battered and sore to cooperate by JJ arriving and silently assisting her. The guilt was tangible between them. If they were the kind of people to give each year its own name, 2007 would have been The Year of the Never-ending Guilt Trip.

“So,” Emily said finally, over a bowl of soup that was all she could stomach without thinking of a floor awash with blood and hazel eyes turned unfamiliar with glee at the carnage. She wasn’t sure if that last picture was a memory or a nightmare. It was becoming increasingly hard to tell the difference between the two, “a baby?”

JJ picked at her food, cross-legged on the bed they’d made up for her on the couch. It was strange, the things that had torn their family apart, and what was bringing them together once more. “I wasn’t going to tell anyone,” she mumbled into the bowl. “It… didn’t feel right. It feels like I’m… forgetting him by moving on with my life.”

“He’d be so happy,” Emily said, because there was nothing else to say. “Just like we all are.”

“I’m going to ask him to be godfather,” JJ said eventually, and Emily pretended she couldn’t see the tear dripping down the elf’s thin nose. “Or… I was…”

“I think there’s nothing he’d love more,” Emily said quietly.

 

* * *

 

Two weeks after Cyrus, she hobbled into her home and a throaty voice said, “You look like shit.” When she froze, it continued from the shadows of her kitchen. “Will you shoot me now that you know what I can do?”

Sergio snarled, roared, expanded to his most threatening size, easily standing as tall as her waist. _“Get out!”_ he spat. _“You stink of blood. I won’t allow you to endanger her.”_

“Sergio, move!” she snapped, trying to push past him to get to the kitchen, but he was immovable. “Spence?” There was a rustle of fabric and a thump. Sergio’s growls stopped, the fur on his shoulders still stiffly upright but his ears flicked forward. When Emily shoved at him, he let her past reluctantly, padding heavily after her. The kitchen’s light found him curled against her fridge, his back to the steel, reeling as his eyes protested the sudden illumination. He covered his face with a whine that she pursed her lips at, fighting anger and frustration at his casualness at sauntering back into her life. She thought of the dead and felt sick. Then, angry.

There wasn’t really room for much else other than anger.

Sergio’s mouth hung open, tasting the air. _“Emily,”_ he said quietly, and there was a warning in his tone but she was beyond listening to it.

“Fuck you,” she snarled, crossing her arms and trying to control the urge to curse him into next week. “Fuck you, Spencer Reid. You think you can just fucking vanish for months on fucking end and then come back like nothing has happened, like people haven’t _died_.” _Like you didn’t slaughter five people to save my life; entirely of your own accord. Like I don’t know that they didn’t die by Foyet’s order. Like you’re not a murderer in every possible way now._

He was still covering his eyes, still hunched like a child, and Sergio was small again now. _“Emily,”_ he said again, paw tapping her leg, and she pushed him aside gently with her foot.

“Why are you here?” she continued. “What, did you get horny and think hey fuck, I’ll just drop in on Prentiss! She’s never turned me down before… or did killing Cyrus give you such a rush you thought that—”

“I don’t know.” He cut her off, his voice harsh, still not looking at her. He slid a hand up her fridge, standing on wobbly legs. “I don’t know, Emily. I didn’t come here on purpose. I’ll leave, I’m leaving.” He took a step away from the fridge and staggered. Emily watched incredulously.

“Oh, I get it,” she sighed. “You got drunk! _Fantastic_.”

He looked at her and her chest went tight at the sight of him. Then he turned and walked towards the window. Then, he fell, barely missing the table on his way down.

And he didn’t get up.

_“He’s sick,”_ Sergio finished, sitting down and eyeing her warily. _“Really sick this time.”_

Damn.

 

* * *

 

It took her longer than it should have been to drag his skinny ass to her bed and he repaid her by vomiting all over the covers. She was going to get mad at him, but her fury had trickled away at some point between the kitchen and here, and instead she just tugged the blankets off and left him laying fully clothed on the mattress. It was spelled to keep it clean anyway, and she was sure he’d slept on worse. His skin burned where she touched it and the glazed look in his eyes didn’t bode well. He didn’t fight her when she held aspirin to his dry lips and followed with a cup of water, just obediently swallowed. A darker part of her mind muttered that at least Foyet had taught him to behave.

The rest of her shuddered at the horror of that thought. She’d have preferred he’d fought her.

“Your brain is frying itself,” she pointed out to him when he woke up and looked down at the splatters of vomit on his shirt with disgust. “You might want to spell up something to cool it down.” She couldn’t spare any pity. Not right now. Not yet. Not when it was becoming horribly obvious to her that she was alone in this new nightmare. Emergency services wouldn’t treat the thrall-bound. It was too dangerous for them. Morgan was out. Rossi, maybe.

Rossi, probably. She didn’t trust Hotch not to make the choice that would bring his family home.

“Penance,” he said instead, and threw up again. This time he managed to get most of it in the bowl she offered, but it was tinged with red and suddenly it was hard to breath around the fear in her chest. “Prentiss, do you have a pen?”

He didn’t look like he could hold a pen, let alone focus long enough to write anything. “Why?” she asked coolly, putting the bowl aside and considering her options. And she was Prentiss again, apparently, like it was an age ago and they were still new to each other.

He blinked at her and smiled; for one long, bizarre second the colour in his flushed cheeks and bright eyes made him look innocent and young and not a murderer at all. Doyle had used to smile at her like that. “Gideon wants a geographical profile drawn up,” he said hoarsely. “I need to get it done before we head home.”

A thud on her bedside cupboard announced Sergio’s presence. _“Get cooling runes on the bed,”_ he instructed. _“That fever hasn’t peaked, and you don’t have the facilities to deal with it if it does. He’ll seize.”_

“He’ll get what he wants,” she choked out, not managing to sound as hard as she was trying for. “He’ll die.” _And others will live for that sacrifice._

_“Or he’ll simply end up brain-dead. A cruel end for a man who believes himself solely to be the sum of his intellect. Have some mercy.”_

“Like he did for the people he killed?” she retorted, and she knew as soon as the words left her mouth that they were unfair. She didn’t even believe them herself. Sergio’s accusing gaze only hammered that home.

“Grace Harcourt,” Reid said suddenly, drawing his knees to his chest and shuddering on the mattress, sweat staining his clothes and making his skin gleam. “She rode her bike to school. Born on the third of June. Preferred silver to gold. She’s gone, my fault. No atonement.” He closed those fever-bright eyes and gagged, the sound ripping out of him. “I’ll burn for that.”

_“Yes,”_ Sergio commented, _“here lies a man with no mercy. I hear his memory is infallible. He’ll carry the memories of their deaths with him until the day he follows them into the dark. Fortunately, if you don’t decide right now what you’re going to do, the dark is merely hours away. We’ll get to watch him boil from the inside out_ — _will you hold his hand as he passes, or is that mercy too kind?”_

Her cat was an asshole.

And he was absolutely, one-hundred percent correct.

She got her brush and painted the runes around Spencer’s body, feeling the temperature drop as soon as she poured her magic into them, his breathing evening out as his fever dipped, shivering against the mattress. She didn’t look directly at him as she did so. She didn’t think of him before. She did a Morgan; she simply thought of him as he was now, and so she guarded her heart.

And then, she waited.

 

* * *

 

“She’s gone,” he sobbed once, clutching at his stomach. “I can’t go home, she’s gone away. Maybe she never existed.” Emily didn’t answer, there was no point. She just pulled a blanket tighter around her shoulders and watched him carefully.

Sergio’s voice was deadpan when he spoke. _“She’s right here, Doctor.”_

“He doesn’t know what you’re saying,” she said, eyes flickering to her familiar. He wasn’t usually the type to be sentimental. Neither of them were, or they hadn’t been, before Reid had turned that on its head and made a sap out of her and a watchful guardian out of her cat.

_“He knows someone kind is speaking to him. And I imagine it’s been a very long time since anyone used his title. Both of which are probably things that will give him strength, don’t you think?”_

“It’s pointless.” It wasn’t, she knew that. But she hated hearing his voice so discordant, when once he had wielded words as a delicate tool that he’d delighted in.

_“Since when has kindness needed a point?”_

 

* * *

 

“Do you have a profile?” Reid asked suddenly, when the clock was slowly ticking past one in the morning and everything was getting hazy. She groaned from her makeshift bed on the bedroom floor, preparing herself for more incoherent rambling.

“You’re not at work, Spence,” she said tiredly, pressing her head into the pillow. The light sheet she’d thrown on him rustled as he rolled over to face her, the only covering he had since she’d managed to get his disgusting clothes off him.

“Obviously,” he snapped. “I’m lucid, Emily. I mean, on me. Do you have a profile on me?”

She froze, and the silence of the night deepened. All she could hear was the rasp of his breath, Sergio’s heartbeat by her ear, and the rush of her own blood. “Yes.”

“Oh. Good. That will help you.”

“Once you’re free,” she said quietly into the pillow, sure he could hear her despite that. “You know they count the thrall-bound as a separate entity, right? Your actions while bound won’t be held against you once you’re free.”

“Once I’m free,” he repeated softly, coughing. Then he didn’t say anything for the longest time, until, “It’s cold.” She sat up and peered at him through the light of the lamp. Not enough colour in his eyes, too much in his face. He shivered, but she could see sweat on his skin. The room stunk of sickness; a mixture of vomit and sweat, and something ominous that hung in the shadows and waited to see who would win this battle.

_Here we go again,_ she thought grimly, and renewed the runes. Out loud she said, “Why now? Why are you sick now? I saw the potential for illness in you months ago.”

“The wolf was sick, he vowed a monk to be—but when he got well, a wolf once more was he,” Reid muttered, half-closing his eyes and looking about for the water she’d left him. She flinched as cracked lips split, the fever drying them and leaving them bloodied, and passed him the glass. It trembled. “He has less control when my body destroys itself. Logically, I would allow that destruction. And yet here I am. I fell in a strange place as a fevered man, and woke here in the one place I might get better, despite not wishing to survive.”

_“This is what happens when you let a clever man learn philosophy,”_ Sergio remarked. _“He becomes pretentious.”_

“Shut up, Sergio,” she said, the muscles of her mouth tightening in what should have been a smile. She took the glass back, ignoring the water that trickled from the corner of his mouth. Where her fingers touched his, they came away clammy. “You’re not lucid anymore, are you?”

“Did you ever get the chess piece?” he asked instead, blinking slowly up at her. “The Queen? Did you ever retrieve it? It’s an integral piece, you know. Most amateur players never recover from the loss of it.”

“How is that the important thing right now?” she asked with a bark of harsh laughter that sounded cruel and out of place.

He looked confused and lost. “How is it not?” he said, and closed his eyes.

 

* * *

 

Two o’clock and he decided it was time to talk her ear off again. It would have been promising, considering at least he was conscious, but not all of it made a huge amount of sense. She wished he’d sleep again, even if his sleep was restless and punctuated by him tossing and turning, moaning with the pain of his illness. It was somewhat nice to hear his voice lecturing at her again, especially since only understanding every one word in twenty was usually par for the course when talking to him. He also seemed to have picked up a weird obsession with horses at some point, one she was sure he hadn’t had before. She just wished he’d stop mumbling about someone chasing him, especially since the use of the female pronoun suggested that someone was her, and she wasn’t entirely sure how to deal with that.

“You know, it’s considered a sin to consort sexually with a demon,” he said suddenly after a ten-minute lecture on the psychoanalytic theory that she only half listened to. “Religious texts would indicate that if there is an afterlife, yours would include hellfire and brimstone for loving me.” He sounded almost teasing.

“ _If_ there’s an afterlife?” she asked incredulously, staring at the roof. “You’d think, of all people, a demon would know.”

“My mother burned,” Reid said instead as his mind jumped frantically from one thought to another, his voice wobbling, and she felt sick. “She put me outside and then she burned. I tried to make it rain to save her and instead I made winds that made it burn faster. We repeat the sins of our fathers; you should be aware of that.”

“I’ll buy a fire extinguisher,” she remarked. Sergio was gone, and a quick survey of the room came up empty. She wondered when he’d left her side.

“He’s burning too,” Reid whispered to no one in particular. “I can feel him suffering. He’s trying to spare himself through me, but the damage is too much.” Emily wasn’t entirely sure if that statement was real or the product of his fevered brain, but she hoped it was true. And she hoped that wherever Foyet was, he was in agony.

 

* * *

 

Half three and his skin was dry and he wasn’t talking anymore. He wasn’t doing much of anything anymore. When she felt for a pulse, she found nothing. His head flopped to the side slackly, and when she held his hand in hers, the nails were pale and tinged with blue. The only sign of life was the slight shift of his chest. If a whisper could have a physical body, she was looking at it. There was every possibility that this was the oldest he would ever be.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to disassociate her memories of his victims with her memories of the time they shared, and she could feel her brain grinding to a halt in an attempt to panic, to cripple her.

“Runes aren’t working,” she said out loud, helplessly. She didn’t know why. There was no one there to help her. “You know that you’re dying, right? Spence?”

Silence. The presence loomed.

Sergio appeared, a long black line of fur along Spencer’s torso where he’d been laying. _“Time to act,”_ he said, tail flicking. _“I smell death. Call Rossi, or lose him for good. I can’t do much more.”_

“He’s dying,” she repeated numbly, because the fact was huge and inescapable, and blocking every exit from this nightmare. A year and a half, leading to this bed and his life trickling away like sand between her open fingers. She could lay next to him on the bed and wrap herself around him and try to hold him there with the force of her heart; but no matter how much she loved him, death wouldn’t be stayed. No matter how much she needed him, it wouldn’t change the fact of his illness eating away at his body and leaving him a husk. Finishing what Hankel, and Foyet, had started.

_“Yes. Are you going to let him? He would thank you. Perhaps the others would as well, once they recovered from their grief. But if he does, all your work comes to nothing. All your hope becomes defunct.”_

She didn’t call Rossi. She didn’t call Hotch, or 911. She picked up her phone and did the only thing that seemed logical at the time.

**To JJ:** **I need your help. Please.**

 

* * *

 

The elf stared down at him, sprawled on the bed with the tangled sheet doing very little to hide his wasted form, and on her face was every emotion that Emily herself had battled the last year, and then some more on top. Love, fear, horror. Longing. A shadow of her duty; their temptation to let him die here and save them all the uncertainty of his future.

“How long has he been like this?” she asked quietly, and reached for him with a hand that trembled like she was the one teetering on the edge of seizing.

“Eleven hours, but not this bad,” Emily said. “JJ…”

The air around them plummeted, becoming cold and frigid, and Emily’s breath was almost torn from her lungs in shock. “He’s demon-kind,” JJ said calmly, and the horror was gone. “They’re pretty hardy. This would kill a human.” Ice formed around her hand as she lay it on the mattress, tracing patterns across his skin that melted, reformed, melted again. A visible struggle between his determination to suffer, and hers to drag him back. “You might want to leave. He’s going to wake up cranky and very cold.” Emily knew that she’d suddenly become unnecessary. She backed out of the room and left the friends alone, locked in their battle for his life.

She’d been wrong. There’d been no temptation on JJ’s face to let his illness take him. Only Emily was cold enough to consider that.

He’d survive this night, and it would be through no victory of her own.

 

* * *

 

She walked past once, and JJ’s voice was a steady, reassuring lilt.

“You should be here lecturing me about eating healthy and the stages of foetal development, I know you would be if you could. I wish you could be here to meet him when he comes,” she was saying quietly. “You’d like Will. He’s a good man. He’s… helped me a lot, these past few months. I can’t even begin to know what you’re going through, Spence, but we’ve hurt so much. Morgan can’t think for missing you, and now he feels like he’s betraying you because he was more scared for Garcia than he was for your safety that night. Do you know that Hotch has three photos in his bottom drawer? A recent one of Jack and Haley riding together, one of them from before, and one of you. He looks at them to remind himself who he’s doing this for. He’s never once considered removing your photo. Emily wouldn’t believe me if I told her—she sees the worst in people. She’s terrible at trusting, but she trusted you.”

Emily crept away again. This wasn’t for her ears.

 

* * *

 

What felt like hours passed, but the sky outside was still dark. She barely registered her front door opening and the man who walked in, following her cat. Instead, she stared down at the notes and sketches she’d painstakingly slaved over for months now; the culmination of the work to free him. Rossi didn’t say anything to her, just looked down on her and her work, then walked past and into the bedroom. She waited, the papers in front of her blurring together, but there was no sound from inside.

When he emerged, he looked tired. Sitting heavily on the ground across from her, he picked up a sheaf of notes and studied them without seeing. “He’s still alive,” he commented quietly. “JJ’s doing well. I don’t think he recognised me.”

“It close enough to finished,” she whispered, more to herself than him. “He’s weak now, he won’t fight it.”

Rossi shook his head. “He needs something to fight it, or it will just kill him outright. Then where would all JJ’s hard work have gone?”

Her mouth tasted sour. “So, I’m just supposed to watch him walk out of here again? How many more times?”

_“Everything ends eventually, Emily_ ,” Sergio sent, sitting in a pool of shadow.

“The bad as well as the good,” the shadow added, covering his paws so it was hard to tell where the cat ended and shade began.

 

* * *

 

Rossi slept in a way that was the direct contrast to how he was when he was awake. When awake, he was an intimidating force of a man, one whom Emily was beginning to suspect had only stayed second circle because he couldn’t be bothered with the fuss of first. When asleep, he was anyone’s father or grandfather. Head lolling back from his sprawled position on the floor, mouth hanging open to emit bone-rattling snores that left Sergio’s fur on end; the only thing needed to complete the picture was a worn robe and some fluffy slippers. Maybe a pipe.

It made Emily smile, and for that she was sorely grateful.

A soft cough drew her attention to the doorway. Rossi’s snores continued unheeded. “Fever is down, he’s asleep,” JJ rasped, her eyes red-rimmed and skin paler than usual. “He’s been taking awful care of himself. No wonder he got sick. Idiot.”

“Thank you,” Emily said, and JJ looked at her strangely.

“Why are you thanking me?” she asked sharply. “I didn’t do it for you. Jesus, Em, he’s my friend as well. I don’t see why you get so angry with Morgan for blaming Reid for the murders; you do exactly the same. You look at him and see a murderer—you see the potential for more deaths resting solely on his shoulders.”

“I see my duty,” Emily snapped, temper frayed from the hours of waiting. “If he lives, more people die. Whether or not he’s a murderer or just a tool Foyet wields.”

“I see two people who need coffee and breakfast,” Rossi said, slipping so smoothly from deeply asleep to wide awake that Emily suspected he’d been faking the whole time. “Because both of them are exhausted and cranky and talking shit.”

“Reid…” Emily began.

_“I’ll stay with him. Go eat.”_ Sergio vanished into the room. _“You’ve been cooped up here going out of your mind for far too long, and JJ needs food.”_

“My magic is in there,” JJ said suddenly, as they walked through the parking lot outside Emily’s apartment building to Rossi’s car. “I checked his bounds once the fever abated. I didn’t remove it, not yet, but it’s there and it’s mine.”

Emily thought of the rune, so close to being complete, and her magic that was finally back under her control and so much more than it had been. “Maybe this really is the end of it,” she mused, shoving away the anger and frustration of the past twenty-four hours and considering the possibilities that were open to them now. “Maybe no one else has to die.”

Later, she’d realize how absurdly optimistic that hope had been.


	14. Listen

Dawn was casting pastel tendrils across the sky outside her bedroom window when Reid woke, and she couldn’t help but think how close it had been that he would never have known this morning.

“My head hurts,” he said, his voice so painfully hoarse that her own throat twinged in sympathy. “Emily?”

“Here,” she replied sleepily, wiping her mouth and sitting up. The top of his head was barely visible from her position on the floor, his hair chaotically tousled. She wanted to slide up there and smooth it down, running the lank locks through her fingers; she knew what he’d do from experience, his face shifting into a sappy grin as he melted under her clever fingers. What he would have done. Who knew how this new man would respond to her touch?

But god, how she _wanted._

He sucked in a shocked breath, almost painfully surprised, and she waited to hear how he planned to break her heart today. “You’re here,” he said plainly, and sat up, wincing. He studied her intently, eyes skimming over her body slowly, cautiously. “I thought… I don’t know what I thought.”

_Remember when you used to pick the green beans out of your dinner because you didn’t like the shape of them,_ she thought wildly. _Remember when we decided to walk to the corner store for milk and it rained and you fell in a puddle, and I stood there and laughed until you couldn’t help but join in._ Out loud, she said, “You need a shower.” He really did smell, of vomit and old sweat and near misses. He also needed sleep, and food, and his life back, but they knew it was only a matter of time until Foyet woke enough to drag him back to hell.

“Yes,” he said shortly, and she remembered how he used to spin one word into seven, turning a simple question into a minefield of facts and figures and a practised level of eccentricity she couldn’t hope to achieve in her lifetime. “Okay, yes…” Before she could stop him, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and tried to stand, the sheet pooling around his feet in a nest-like shape that did nothing to catch him as he fell. “Ow.”

“Idiot,” she muttered, pushing him off of her. He went reluctantly, slithering to the ground like a discarded rag, and laying sprawled and weak. “Oh, look at me, I’m Spencer Reid and I almost died—but I’m sure I’m just fine so watch me leap out of bed like nothing happened!”

He shot her a woeful look, and she took pity on him, threading an arm around his chest and trying to hide the way she twitched away from him nervously, almost with revulsion. She’d never been scared of him before now, but she held him this morning and her heart hammered and her breath caught and she knew it was fear and nothing cleaner. He knew it too, and she saw the way the knowledge cut him deeper than any physical blow he’d been dealt.

_Remember when I thought you could never hurt me_ , she thought, and almost gasped.

“Ahhh,” he said suddenly, stilling in her grasp. “Wait, I… JJ is here, isn’t she? I can’t go out there.”

“You can’t be serious,” she intoned dryly, refusing to look at his face, because if he was serious she was probably going to lose it right here on the bedroom floor, and if she started crying from laughter, those tears would turn real soon enough and all of her shields would be broken. “Spencer, who do you think saved your ungrateful ass last night? Trust me. JJ has now seen _everything_ you have to offer. She’s probably asleep anyway, she was exhausted.”

The look of sheer horror on his face should have been hilarious. It struck her as odd that he still cared about things like modesty and his nakedness, when they’d all seen more of him than his body could ever show. “If it makes you feel better,” she supplied, smiling with a Sergio grin that only made him look more frightened, “Rossi was in here too.”

“My life is over,” he whined, covering his face with one hand like he could shut out the world with his spread fingers.

She wished he could.

 

* * *

 

She hated him for the fact that even though she knew what his hands had done, what his eyes had seen, she still loved them. She had wondered if she did, doubted it even, but watching him eye the shower stall nervously, twitching like a horse about to race, she knew she did.

“In,” she commanded. He did so immediately, and guilt instantly stabbed in her gut at the practised obedience of him. Then he turned and eyed her warily, and the guilt receded.

There was some spine still in that gaze.

“What are you doing?” he asked, eyes tracking her hands as she unbuttoned her shirt and shucked her loose slacks. She felt a strange rush of shyness at his open regard, as though it was the first time they were bare to each other instead of one of countless many.

“Making sure you don’t knock yourself stupider by falling in the shower,” she said calmly, tossing the clothes aside. He frowned, and there was no spark of interest in his gaze, or lower, and that more than anything spoke to how ill he remained. If they let him walk out of here, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t just sicken again, except out of reach this time. She tried not to dwell on that.

“Household accidents are the most common cause of death.” He grinned, and the grin slid off his face as his skin paled, dark eyes turning unfocused. She caught him as he swayed. “Or heart disease. I don’t remember.” His breath tickled her ear, and she thought of turning her head and pressing her lips to his, but her stomach roiled at the idea.

“Oh, you are going to be shit fucking useless at trivia nights from now on, aren’t you?” she said, helping him sit awkwardly on the floor of the shower. He leaned his head back and squinted up at the taps. “Okay. We’re going to do this sitting then. Lovely.”

A slurred mumble was his only answer, bringing his legs up and letting his head loll onto his knees. She stared at his back, at the junction where shoulder-blade curved smoothly into wing; the unfamiliar shape of the muscles that powered the inhuman appendages. Okay. This was fine. This was just fine. If they were any other couple, showering together would be simple. Showering together wouldn’t involve squatting next to him while he tried to keep his scattered mind together; it wouldn’t involve dodging around awkwardly placed wings or avoiding the areas of his body that still looked swollen and sore. It wouldn’t involve the cold slippery touch of the glass against her ass as she tried to stop her skin from brushing against his.

Simple. Taps, turn to lukewarm. She’d never been so grateful for detachable showerheads. It might be silly, getting him up and out of bed so soon, but maybe it would also show him that he could be clean still, at least on the outside. She owed him that, since she couldn’t even give him the comfort of knowing she absolved him of guilt.

“Can I?” she asked gently, showing him the sponge. He shrugged, the water pattering against his shoulder and tracing down his back, leaving glittering droplets across the folded webbing of his wings. Okay, Prentiss. _Just… don’t think too much about it._

Starting at his neck, ignoring how his eyes are blank behind heavy lids, lost in whatever darkness Foyet had left him in; ignoring the cords of his throat, tense enough that she worried that pressing the sponge against them would cut off his airway. Ignoring the pulse that rambled on unevenly as though he’d just run a marathon instead of walked a hallway.

Shoulders. Back. Easy. Nothing really all that different. If he noted how she paused when the sponge caught on long white scarring across his back that was new and horribly, horribly familiar, he didn’t comment.

_Okay, Foyet_ , she thought, scrubbing around those silver lines. _Okay. I’m not gonna kill you when I catch you, because first I owe you every blow against him. Starting with a fucking whip, you cunt._

“Open,” she said, tapping one of his wings. This time he did shudder, and she waited. And didn’t say any of the things she wanted to when he reluctantly curved it open, casting shadows in the stall that danced in the stream of water and turned the light muted and fae. She found herself eyeing the continued barring of the whip-marks, but this time lacing the impossibly delicate skin of his wingspan. “This could have crippled you,” she said instead, stupidly obvious, and he nodded slowly.

“The other is worse,” he said, looking away. “It… got caught in something. It makes flying difficult. It’s mostly magic anyway, wind currents and temperatures, but… I won’t ever fly an obstacle course.” He bared his teeth in a sleepy, fractured grin, and she traced her fingers over the bones of his wings, the sponge forgotten. His skin was cool under her fingertips, and she realized she’d forgotten to be afraid. “It looks like he used a whip, but he didn’t.”

“Knife,” she said after a careful beat of studying. _All the better. I don’t think Hotch would let me take a whip into the cell we keep him in._

_He won’t see a knife._

Almost without her consent, her fingers continued their quiet exploration of his body. She avoided his arms with their gilded reminders of his cage, but he wouldn’t have thanked her for drawing attention to the rash of red dots along the crook of his elbow anyway. He closed his eyes, one leg slipping down and laying as straight as the lanky limb could manage in the enclosed space they’d both crammed themselves into, savouring a rare gentle touch. His side, his chest, the skin over his heart. She splayed her hand flat there for a moment, and wondered if he still remembered how to love her. His heart beat like he did.

Sliding her fingers down his chest, along his belly, and it could have been sexual, except it really wasn’t. Her leg cramped, and she sat slowly, carefully, her own legs tangling with his and their sides pressed against each other in a long line of heat, the showerhead held loosely in one hand and sending a steady stream of water to patter against his hip. Resting those curious fingers against his thigh, her bitten nails tapping along the swirls of the hated tattoo on his leg. One of the few parts of him that was unmarked; Foyet would have gotten a sick glee out of the brand, she had no doubt of that. He wouldn’t want to blur the cruelty of it with bruising.

It was a rediscovery, and in that long, quiet, frozen time of him dozing slightly under the warm water and her re-memorising every part of him, she realized that she didn’t have to remember how to love him at all, because she’d never stopped. Just like Doyle, she invited danger into her bed and relished the way it made her feel alive.

“What do you remember of us?” she asked, and he startled awake. Hazel eyes caught hers, and she knew in that moment she’d imagined the bloodied glee in them, because they could never be so fatally unkind.

“Being happy,” he said eventually, and reached up to tuck a strand of wet hair behind her ear.

 

* * *

 

Sergio tried to follow them back into her room, and she shoved him out with a scowl. He bristled, about to protest, and by the look on Rossi’s face he was going to as well. If they didn’t trust Reid alone with her, why had they helped save him?

“Dave,” JJ called from the kitchen. “Can you give me a hand with this?”

Rossi shot them both an unhappy look, teetering on outright disapproval. Behind Emily, Reid shifted uneasily, his breath still raspy. “Come on, hairball,” Rossi said finally, jerking his head towards the kitchen. “Let’s go help JJ before she ushers in a new ice age and you get turned into cheap mittens.”

Sergio grumbled deep in his chest, a noise far too loud for the diminutive size he was at that point in time, and followed the older mage away. _“Don’t be long,”_ he sent back, his voice an itchy whine. _“He has power again. He’s not safe.”_

“Shows what you know,” she muttered, because Reid didn’t need power to be dangerous. Not to her. Shutting the door with a click, she turned and swallowed hard. Reid watched her, naked except for the towel slung around his waist, and although she could still see the wasting lines of his illness along the curve of his ribcage and the gauntness of his face, she could also see the magic there too. His wings sat mantled away from his spine, almost threatening, his face a cool blankness that was almost a carbon copy of the look that Gideon had perfected. He looked dangerous.

He looked like Doyle.

She wasn’t going to lie and say that it didn’t send a cold jolt of something hungry into her belly and lower, to pool between her legs. A dark arousal that she’d never admit to.

“You’ve reached second circle,” he said suddenly, tilting his head to examine her diploma framed on the wall by her bed. Sergio had insisted. “You should have been second circle months ago.” His voice was deeper than usual, worn down by vomiting and talking without pause as the delirium had sunk in. She swallowed again and squeezed her thighs together.

_Get it the fuck together, Prentiss_ , she thought angrily. _How can you look the victims’ families in the eyes if you jump into bed with the man who killed them?_

“Are you still in love with me?” she asked suddenly, channelling her inner thirteen-year-old girl. The blankness on his face slipped, replaced with shock. He didn’t answer straight away, and a claw reached into her chest and threatened to tear her open. She stood waiting. When he walked towards her and wrapped his arms around her awkwardly, hesitantly, like she was fragile, she didn’t react. He still hadn’t answered. She just stilled in his tense grasp and watched a droplet of water slip down his shoulder, across his chest, along the faint lines of scarring on his belly down to the top of the towel… she snapped her gaze back up to his throat quickly.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “It’s not that I stopped loving you… I just… Emily.” She blinked furiously, not sure if the burning of her eyes was tears or a sneeze but really fucking hoping it was the latter, because she wasn’t going to fucking cry over him again, she’d done that enough. “Emily.” A warm hand cupped her chin, tilted her face up to meet his eyes. Nimble fingers traced her cheek, a caress, her skin catching on the raised ridge of the scarring where they’d burnt his credentials off of him to stop his family from reaching him before they could rip his freedom away. She could feel his heart rattling, a drumbeat in his chest that said everything he couldn’t.

“Let me in,” she said quietly, the claw reaching down into her belly now and making it cramp painfully. She didn’t want to see this, know this. Fuck, it was the last thing she wanted. This was how they’d breached him originally, by exploiting the weakness she’d left in his mind.

But she needed it.

He took a shuddering breath. “The only times I’ve heard my name spoken since Tobias died is when you say it,” he replied, trembling under her hands that had reached up and wrapped around him without her consent. “Some days I wake up and I can’t even remember it myself. I feel like I’ve stepped into the body of Spencer Reid; invaded him. Pushed him out and continued on as though I am him. But I’m not, I’m an alien. I must be, because he loved you and I remember how that felt, but I don’t understand how.” And, then, he opened his mind before she could reply, and she stepped in and found herself in a barrage of conflicting memories and thoughts and moments, in no particular order. Distantly, she heard someone call out.

_Moving in an unfamiliar woman, an unimportant woman, feeling the rush of energy her release brought when suddenly_ **_she_ ** _was there in his mind, startled, shocked, trying to flee. “Emily, wait!” he called, but she was gone. The nameless woman asked who Emily was. “I don’t know,” he replied, and realized he couldn’t remember, his limitless capacity for memory failing him. Who was he?_

_He didn’t know that anymore either._

_Foyet pushing close, his mouth inches from his lips. “Don’t move,” the man taunted, even as he tried to desperately pull away, skin twitching with revulsion. “Come on, half-breed. Isn’t this what your kind need?” Leaning closer, hot breath, and he gagged and couldn’t move, couldn’t stop him. Foyet craved control, and his was complete._

_Sitting in the church side by side with Tobias. “It will help,” he promised, and fingers, needle-sharp, bit into the skin of his arm and it did help, eventually._

_A deer in the woods, picking calmly through the dew-bright grass surrounding the gravestones of his prison. It flicked an ear, eyed him, stayed calm. He was no threat to her. “Shows what you know,” he said to himself, and laughed harshly. She ran, and her hooves clattered illogically like horseshoes on an asphalt road._

_A woman, bleeding, dying, screaming. Reaching for him, even as he paced the street outside the home of the one Foyet had told him to hunt. Turning away from the house, trying to shake the woman off. Recognising her as she began to slip into the dark. “Emily?” he called, and remembered. Synapses firing, misfiring, tracing patterns of recollection across the full surface of his damaged mind. He stopped hunting and somewhere a horse squealed like its throat was cut, red blood feeding the hungry ground beneath._

_Relentless hunger. Primitive. Inanition weakening his body, atrophying away the entity that was once Spencer Reid and leaving the skeletal remains of the darkest parts of him._

_Knife in his hands. Her screams and his. Shoving the memory away brutally and turning to face a smiling boy in a dark hat, a rope in his hands. Turned again and now it was a man, someone’s son and brother and lover; a man who laughed and cried and died. A whole life spent that led to this moment, and he pressed his face against the ground near the body, tasting dirt and blood that wasn’t his own, and he hoped to die._

_Scrubbing at those hands until they were raw, but the blood refusing to fade from his vision, illusory palinopsia, a persistent activation of his visual memory creating the imagery, his mind malfunctioning; see how crazy he is now? Foyet laughing at him. “You’re just like me now, Half-breed.” Those words, close enough to his name, coiling into his brain like smoke, stamping themselves on his soul with indelible ink._ **_Half-breedhalf-breedhalf-breed._ **

**_Just like me now._ **

_Murderer._

_One final memory, the freshest. So fresh that their noses burned with the reek of piss and infection overlaying a lighter, cleaner tang of straw. Foyet standing, staggering towards him, face twisted. It was him. The smell was him; his body rotting from the inside out. Half-breed backed away from that rot before it could spread to him, but he knew it was already inside him. “Get here,” snarled Foyet, his hands claws, stumbling and slipping to the floor. It was a command, but it wasn’t, lacking his usual biting force. He teetered, feeling the illness washing at him, trying to crush him. “Take this from me.”_

_No._

_He fled._

_He went to_ **_her._ **

She let go and slumped, choking on what she’d seen, and the _emotions_ that had come with it. Spencer was wrong. He hadn’t forgotten how to feel—he’d felt everything just fine. He was drowning in the feeling of it, and now she was too.

When she surfaced, it wasn’t Reid who held her, but Rossi, and the room swam with worried faces. “His name is Spencer,” she told Rossi seriously, who looked confused and then doubly as worried. She needed him to understand. “That’s his name. Not Half-breed, or Nothing, or anything that bastard used to control him. It’s _Spencer Reid_.”

And then it all went blissfully quiet for a while.

 

* * *

 

Waking up on the bed he’d so recently vacated, she was, for a long moment, sorely thankful that her mattress was spelled for cleanliness, although a small part of her noted sadly that not even the nicer scent of him remained. The sun was winter-warm through her open window, traffic humming under the window. Mid-morning. She didn’t even remember getting into bed. She hoped to fucking god it was JJ who’d put her to bed and not Rossi. There were some things that she didn’t need him to do for her, and that was definitely one of them.

_“Silly witch,”_ Sergio sent sleepily from his perch on the end of the bed, opening one eye to peer at her. _“You took too much from him. You should have known what you would see would be terrible.”_

“More than you can imagine,” she whispered back, ignoring the dull headache thumping behind her eyes and leaning forward to scratch at his ears. “Did the others leave?” _I didn’t say goodbye._

Sergio tensed. _“JJ, yes.”_

Rossi was still here then. He was such a mother hen. It hit her a second later who else he hadn’t said. Oh.

_Oh_.

She padded out into the living-room, her heart in her throat, and found Rossi and Reid playing chess.

Playing. Fucking. Chess.

Their voices murmured, low enough that she couldn’t quite hear them, and they stopped when she walked in. Reid didn’t look guilty, not quite, but some emotion shifted deep in his eyes, softening his face.

“You’re still here,” she said to him, quietly.

He shrugged, and moved his rook. “Foyet is… preoccupied.”

The ghost of a harsh voice sneered in her mind. _“Take this from me.”_

“No,” she gasped, shuddering. Two pairs of eyes snapped up to watch her, curious and dull respectively. Rossi went to say something, but Reid softly said check and his interest swung back to the board.

“I do have to leave though,” Reid added, as Rossi shifted his queen to block his knight. Emily watched silently. Black knight took the white rook. White castle to block the black queen. Black queen took the castle, left the white knight open to attack. They paused, waiting, the knight’s life teetering in the tap of Reid’s impatient fingers. Rossi didn’t move it, just watched. Reid frowned, asked, “You’d risk your queen to save the knight?”

The older mage yawned. “I tire of the game. It’s gone on for far too long.”  It all happened quite quickly after that. Reid moved to take the knight, lost his queen in a fumble of hands that Emily didn’t quite catch because she was caught up in the smile teasing the corner of Reid’s mouth.

“Checkmate,” Rossi announced, tipping the black king. It rolled onto the floor and tapped against the heel of Reid’s shoe. He nudged it curiously, like Sergio with an interesting bug. “You play like you want to lose, Dr. Reid.”

“You play with your heart on your sleeve,” Reid replied almost inaudibly, and Emily wasn’t sure they were talking about chess anymore. “I have to go.”

Emily didn’t kiss him as he left. He didn’t even try to hold her. Somehow, Rossi’s dark eyes on them made that impossible. He just left.

And that was the last time she saw him until the day Hotch died.

 

* * *

 

In her dreams, her mind sorted through the mess of everything that had happened to him. She forgot what it was felt like to feel well-rested, but, in return, she saw into his soul and shared it with him. Her dreams were cold and broken and she welcomed them, even though when she woke they were impossible to remember, except for the horror they both felt.

_“Your mother was crazy too, you know,” Foyet said one day, after Tobias was gone, and he missed him, oh how he missed him. He thought maybe he might miss Tobias more than **the**_ **_others_ ** _, the ones he had trouble holding in his memory, if only because Tobias brought relief and company, and someone to share the fear, and without socialization the animal can become anxious, flighty, and are termed ‘herd-bound’. What animal, Emily? Think._

_“I know,” he admitted quietly, pressing his head against the wall and trying to shut out the cruel voice. Schizophrenia; a mental disorder characterized by abnormal social behaviour and failure to understand reality. He didn’t dare not answer. Last time he’d refused to answer, Foyet took his rage out on a family. Is this reality? He’d always been abnormal. That family hadn’t deserved death._

_Schizophrenia may cause hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking and speech._

_“You’re crazy now as well,” Foyet kept saying. “They can’t fix that. Maybe you always were. How do you know that now isn’t how it’s always been, and maybe your memories are false? You could have been crazy all along.” He leered. “Just like me.”_

_He was probably right. He usually was._

_Schizophrenia causes a notable decrease in cognitive functions._

_You’re smarter than me now, Emily. You know what I’m telling you._

 

* * *

 

Two days after he left, she finished the circle.

“It’s not like I can test it,” she said to Rossi nervously, as he traced his fingers over it. Hotch leaned over his shoulder, eyes following every curve and line. They both paused on her newest additions, Hotch looking confused, Rossi’s eyebrow lifting. “I made some… it’s different, I know, but it might…” The rune from her arm, changed slightly, more emphasis on the essence of his name woven through it. Now instead of a warning, it was an announcement. It was her telling him _this is who you are. Remember that._ And, underneath, the pattern mirrored itself. It spread across the circle, overlaying the rest of the rune with loud, harsh lines that seemed cruel and discordant at first; until you noted the love in the lines and the proclamation of the mirroring.

The tattoo from his hip and leg. The tattoo he hated. Mirrored and therefore no longer half, but whole; a promise of what he could be again. The circle was him and in it was everything she knew of him and more.

“Prentiss,” Rossi stopped her rambling with a curt snap of his voice. She closed her eyes. Months of work. Almost a year. Probably a year now. She couldn’t hear him tell her it was useless, that it wouldn’t work. “Prentiss, this is genius. I don’t think it could be done better.”

“Well done,” added Hotch, and he smiled. Emily Prentiss wasn’t the kind of woman who got mushy over praise, but she’d hold that quiet remark close for a very long time to come.

 

* * *

 

_Sometimes Foyet stopped him from sleeping. Sleep deprivation. The European Court of Sentience Rights once ruled that sleep deprivation lacked ‘the particular intensity and cruelty implied by the word torture’._

_They were wrong._

_The hunger he dealt with, the thirst was easy to fix, but the exhaustion broke him. Once he could have said exactly why. Once he could have said how his brain was impaired, how his body suffered. Now he knew nothing but falling._

_“Heels against the wall, there’s a good Half-breed,” Foyet said calmly, barely looking at him. He sighed and pressed his numb feet back, legs cramping, head spinning. He couldn’t remember how long he’d been like this. It seemed impossible he could stay here much longer. He existed in a state of twilight; constantly slumping and jerking awake with a rush of nausea and shock that left him reeling._ _It was a need to sleep so fierce he thought he might die if he didn’t and everything in him screamed for rest._

_“I didn’t say you could sleep yet. Head up.” Foyet loomed close, at some point he’d walked up to him… when, he didn’t know. Do you? He tilted his head back and the world spun and flung him around, as though he was hanging grimly onto an invisible centrifuge and gravity had failed him. His eyes burned, his stomach cramped, and he knew he was going to faint or vomit, but he wasn’t allowed, and Foyet’s control was inescapable._

_Humans weren’t made to sleep standing up, Emily, not like the horse. Pay attention, please. The horse engages the stay apparatus in the hind legs by shifting its hip position to lock the patella in place. At the stifle joint, a ‘hook’ structure on the inside bottom end of the femur cups the patella and the medial patella ligament, preventing the leg from bending. Are you listening? Do you understand?_

_“You know,” Foyet said at some point, hours and days and years later, or maybe merely seconds. “You’re nothing. If you were something, they would have come for you by now. That girl, that witch, I think you made her up. You made her up_ — _you don’t even know what love is, do you, Nothing?”_

_“Do I?” If he was nothing, how was he talking? Illogical._

_Fuck, he was tired. Listen. Remember._

_“Do you?” Foyet asked, quirking an eyebrow, and he trembled._

_“Maybe,” he mumbled._

_Maybe_

* * *

 

Time _crawled_. It had never gone this fucking slowly before. She thought days had passed, but it was still Monday when she looked at her calendar. No cases. No working on the circle, although she obsessed on it in her mind until she could have cast it blindfolded.

No sign of Reid.

“Maybe Foyet will die and I won’t even need to use the circle,” she complained to Sergio after the fourth time she’d checked the clock to find that the minute hand hadn’t even shifted.

_“If Foyet dies before you use the circle, Reid is lost,”_ Sergio pointed out, and her mouth went dry at the reminder. They were working on a time limit, and he’d chosen _now_ to become illusive. _“We don’t have the benefit of wishing death upon him yet.”_

“He won’t die,” she said, biting savagely at the nail of her index finger and tasting copper. “Not until he’s brought Hotch to his knees. And that’s not going to happen.”

At least no one else had died.

At least not yet.

 

* * *

 

She closed her eyes for a second on the train and

_Tobias screamed and Nobody covered his ears and thought of horses prancing in a ring. At least it wasn’t him this time._

opened them again and considered the possibility of never sleeping again.

 

* * *

 

What felt like years later, but what was actually only that same night, she sat on the fire escape with her legs dangling over the edge, watching the sunset and enjoying the bite of the cool air.

_“You look cold. Get a blanket,”_ Sergio instructed, clattering onto the grating and looking up at her.

“Not yet,” she murmured, and ran her thumb over her silent cell. _Only when he shares it with me._

Not long now.

“Sergio,” she said, turning and kneeling on the escape in front of the cat who’d become her constant, since almost before she could remember. “When I cast the circle, promise me you’ll keep back.”

He opened his pink mouth and sneered at her. _“I’ll do no such thing. You’ll need my strength or you’ll burn yourself out.”_

Running her hand down his smooth fur, she marvelled at how someone so tiny and _belligerent_ had become so damn important to her. “I don’t need your strength, cat,” she teased, sticking the tip of her finger in his ear. He yowled furiously and tried to bite her, swiping sharp claws that barely missed her hand. “I have my own. Besides, you must be getting low on lives by now. Let’s not risk the ones you have left.”

He blinked and three dancing light-bugs appeared around his head, casting gold-green patterns on his fur. _“I have plenty.”_ His voice was outrageously smug. _“I keep them in a matchbox for stupid witch emergencies.”_ Reaching up, he batted at the bugs with a clawed paw, tail twitching.

“That’s sixty years you’re smacking around, cat,” she scolded him. She grabbed him and pulled him into her arms, ignoring his old-man-cat grumbles. “Show some respect to the time.”

His purrs took the sting out of his soft rebuke. _“I’ve lived a long time, Emily. I do what I want with the time remaining.”_

Climbing back through the window with him in her arms was a challenge, but she managed it with a dogged determination. “Just stay back, Serge. Don’t waste them on me.”

_“Cats do what they want and want what they do. You can’t change cats, no more than you can change the past. You’ll exhaust yourself trying.”_

She was definitely getting something with wings next. No more stubborn _cats_.

 

* * *

 

_In the time that he was quietly calling PT (Post-Tobias), Foyet took his cell from him._

_“You don’t need the pain this will bring,” he said with false kindness, and crushed it under his foot. The hunger started up almost immediately, his only lifeline with_ them _gone. It was mostly psychosomatic, but soon it would be real. He’d starve, again, and that was the point because if he starved, there were things that he might have to_ ** _no_**

_Then he sent him to watch the Emily please, tell him. Tell him what you see. He’ll die if you don’t._

_I’m not crazy_

_Something snuffled under him he pressed his belly to the wood and_

 

* * *

 

JJ named her son Henry, and he was perfect. All sleepily flailing limbs, carefully formed fingers and toes, and tiny pointed ears that had Garcia almost in tears when she saw them. Will watched his family and beamed, and Emily wondered if the child would grow to love winter like his mother, or whether he would take after the promise of the power of rivers and waterways like his father.

“A water elf, JJ?” Morgan remarked when Will ducked out to get a coffee. “You know that snow melts in rain, right?”

JJ laughed and cuddled her son close, beaming with the self-satisfaction of every new mother. Hotch hung back, his hip to the wall, his face guarded. “Winter is nothing without water,” she remarked proudly, and Garcia almost cried again.

The tears were unstoppable when they asked Garcia to be little Henry’s godmother. “Ohmygod, yes yes yes,” the tech nymph babbled. “Oh, Henry, I am going to _spoil_ you!” She paused, looking back up from the baby in her arms that JJ had happily passed over. “Wait, do I have a co-godparent?”

JJ swallowed hard and looked down at the blanket, and Emily wished she could take that question back and bring the happiness back to the elf’s face. “Not yet,” she said quietly, running her nails over the coarse fabric of the hospital bed. “I haven’t had the chance to ask him.”

Hotch made a very quiet noise that could have been a cough, or it could have been his heart breaking just a little. She could never quite tell with him; he chose the strangest moments to remind them he was human. “Soon,” he said quietly. “He’ll be home soon.”

 

* * *

 

_“Do you like them?” He turned away from the stall and looked at the girl as she smiled at him, mud on her boots and on her nose._

_“Sorry?” he asked politely. He tried to look past her, to not breathe, to do anything but think of how hungry he was, starving almost. He wanted to cough. He didn’t want to scent her. He did anyway, the rich human tang of her filling his nose; a heady mix of coumarin, sebaceous oils, and the provocative salinity of her perspiration. He was aghast to feel himself responding to that scent, turning his body slightly away from her so she wouldn’t notice._

_“Horses?” she said with a husky laugh and moved closer. He wanted to back away, but something predacious raised its head in the back of his brain, and she was close enough that he could see the pupillary response of her arousal. His body did what he was unwilling to do, summoning her. Now he did step back._

_She had to be twenty-two, no older. Closer to his age than his witch was. What are you doing?_

_“Wait,” she stammered, looking confused. “I… don’t walk away.”_

_He could taste her heartbeat._

_A hoof crashed into a stall behind him, equine teeth snapping at his shoulder, and the moment broke. She blinked, then laughed nervously. “Sorry, he’s the herd leader of a sort,” she joked, and her tone was a weak imitation of the velvet that filled his witch’s voice. “He thinks he has to be so tough and protect everyone_ — _and Emily, this is important. He needs to know that everyone isn’t safe, and that someone is watching them.”_

_“I don’t like horses,” he said suddenly, walking past her quickly to get to the door. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t take this innocent and tar her with his touch. “They frighten me.”_

_She laid a hand on his arm; the feel of her fingers burned him, and he turned on her with a savage need. “I don’t normally do this,” she said, smiling with her eyes. She wanted; he could smell it._

_He swallowed._

_“What’s wrong?”_ Sergio watched her in the dark of her room, tail rustling across the covers restlessly.

“I hated riding horses as a kid,” she murmured, more to herself than him, her dream slipping away and just leaving dread, like all the rest of them had. “So why can’t I stop dreaming of them?”

_“Freud would have a field day with you,”_ was his only reply.

 

* * *

 

Hotch stood in front of the cameras and told the world about their friend. His speech was many things. It was Hotch talking about a man, almost two years lost, who deserved to be remembered. It was him reminding the world that behind the veneer of George Foyet’s control was a man who would have died for any of those victims, if he’d been given the chance. It was a mocking reminder to Foyet that when they found him, and they would, he would remain unremembered. Not once did they say his name. If they had to mention him, they used terms such as ‘the unsub’ or ‘suspect.’

Spencer was the important one here, the press release said. Remember Spencer Reid. Remember all those who had been lost. Remember those who were nameless; those who had had their names stolen.

The calls began to roll in. People talked about their kin, demon-kin, lost to being bound and sold, lost into the darker places in the world where no one cared for them. Over that week, newspapers printed stories from demons who’d survived.

_“Our thoughts are with our kin,”_ said one of them. _“We know his pain, and share it.”_

Another was a letter to the families of the victims, and it didn’t mention Reid at all: _“I didn’t know the people you’ve lost, but I know loss. My husband worked at the scripture. He smelled of vellum and ink and smoke, and I used to know he was home by the scent of him before he even walked in the door. I would still fake surprise, so he was never disappointed. One day he hugged me goodbye, and kissed me and he was whiskery and smiling and finite._

_They bound him first. In his death, there was no honour. They bound him and under their control, he performed atrocities. When they turned their backs on him, he took the boy-child’s body they’d caused him to brutalize, and he threw himself into the ocean. In the waves, he found retribution with the child in his arms._

_I never said goodbye to him. When I smell ink now, I cry because once I was happy._

_My thoughts are with you all, for I know that the tears never dry.”_

The world began to change, just a little, and they knew it would enrage the spectre that haunted them.

“Is this a good idea?” asked Morgan as they stood in the bullpen and watched a news anchor argue with a man whose face was obscured on the phone-in box, and who was only listed as ‘expert.’ Expert of what? Emily wondered. “He’s gonna take this out on Reid.”

“Look at that and tell me we shouldn’t have done this sooner,” Hotch said quietly, as the screen flickered and changed to a fuzzy image of a building, the faces blurred of the people that moved around it in a mix of dark SWAMT uniforms and smaller forms that they carried.

_Crackdown on the trade of demons after public support grows,_ announced the headline cheerily, as though it was a good thing that only _now_ people cared.

“Hope it does piss him off,” Rossi added. “We need him sloppy and hasty. We’re running out of time.”

 

* * *

 

_Are you listening, Emily? Let me teach you how to control a man. How to reduce him to nothing; how to take him apart and rebuild him as your creature._

_First, you isolate him._

_Give him a taste of home. A cell-phone, perhaps, with the names of those who loved him tucked within the memory. Take it away again. Leave it just out of reach. Make him forget home was ever an option._

_Take away food. Take away sleep. Take away comfort. Then give in a little; make him thankful for the little you give him. Make him beg._

_Make him thankful to beg._

_Take away his name. The nameless cannot hope. Now give him a new one. Who is he now? Not who he once was._

_Remind him that no one is looking for him._

_Good. Almost done._

_Turn him into you and then flaunt the creature you’ve made of him. Make sure he knows they revile him._

_And then kill him. He’s dead already; he has been from the first day he was taken. What you’re killing is the idea of him, the hope that he can recover._

_If you’ve done it right, he’ll thank you for it._

 

* * *

 

Two days after the press statement, Hotch died.

Emily thought numbly, when it was quiet again and the blood had been washed out of her hair, that they should have known sooner. They should have known straight away, as soon as the knife had curved into his flesh the first time. What good were their credentials if they could be surpassed with a little bit of knowledge, a whole lot of a magic, and a man who had the ability to put the two elements together?

As with all moments that haunted them, they moved both very slowly and very quickly.

Slowly was waiting in the bullpen, joking together. Slowly was Hotch being late, and the faintest sign of concern appearing in Rossi’s eyes. Slow was his phone ringing out, just like Reid’s had that day. Another empty message: _“You’ve reached SSA Aaron Hotchner. I’m not available, please leave a concise message, and I will return your call.”_

_I’m not available._

_I’m gone just like Spencer Reid._

_Say another goodbye, Prentiss._

“I’ll head over there,” Rossi announced, and that was when everything became fast again, because a man stepped out in front of him and he was a stranger, until he wasn’t. He dropped his glamour and it was Reid; their palms ignited with their boss’s pain. It was Reid and there was blood on his hands and every eye was on him. The building churned with the realization its defences had been breached.

“He’s got Hotch!” Reid cried, and he stunk of burning, twitching maniacally, pain twisting his features with his wings thrown outwards in a soundless exclamation of agony. None of them moved. “Hurry! Foyet has Hotch and he’s killing him!”

None of them moved, but everyone else did.

Gunfire. Mage-fire.

Reid was so focused on them, he dodged neither.

“Spencer!” shrieked Emily, possibly Morgan, maybe both of them, but Reid howled inhumanly and fell, ignoring their fear. Blood pooled on the floor, patterning the desks where his wings flicked it, splattered on Rossi from the impact, and someone was screaming now.

“Stop, stop! Stand down!” Strauss roared, her voice magically enhanced, but the damage was done. “Don’t shoot him!” Reid shot upright and vanished in a clap of bloody wings and the whirl of his passing sent a humid wash of storm air throughout the room. He left behind the stink of fear and _waytoomuchfuckingbloood_ the possibility of it all coming to a horrendous end _._

Rossi charged for the exit, but Strauss called after him, “Dave! Stay here—I’ll send SWAMT. You all, stay here!”

“Like fuck we will,” he shouted, not stopping. Shadows curled at his fingers, nothing like Foyet’s, but still threatening. “I’m going, and so are they. We’ll beat them there.”

“Dave…” Strauss trailed off. Their palms went cold. The runes blackened. “Oh no,” Strauss breathed, staring at Rossi’s hand. Another agent gasped.

“Nope,” Rossi snapped, and shot out of the exit. “Not today, Aaron.”

They followed him and no one stopped them.

 

* * *

 

They reached him and his life was a guttering candle in the wreckage of his home. For one sick, gut-wrenching moment, Emily thought that Reid had done this; made this mess of the man they all admired. This mess of wounds and red and Rossi, covered with Hotch’s blood as well as Reid’s now, holding his life in and hollering for a medic and for JJ. Cold flowed, buying them precious time, and Emily wondered if it would be enough to hold him here. Reid couldn’t have done this. There would be no coming back from that if he did.

“Jack needs his dad,” Morgan said loudly, bluntly. His voice suggested that Hotch pick himself up and stop fucking around. “Don’t you dare die on us, Hotchner. Don’t do that to him.”

Bleary eyes opened. Hope flared in Emily’s breast, and she stepped forward. Her foot almost skidded on a bloody pool, sounding out wetly under her heel. When she put a hand against the wall to steady herself, it came away red. Later she would find blood in her hair and wonder how it got there. “He looks like me now,” Hotch mused, and smiled, and then closed his eyes. He flirted with death, and they could all see the skeletal touch of it on his slack features.

All the magic in the world at her fingertips, and still she watched him slip away.

 

* * *

 

They said he died in the ambulance. They said his heart stopped. It showed what they knew about the human heart. Emily knew that even if his physical heart ceased to beat this day, failing to begin again when they coaxed it to, and if they buried him alongside Gideon in the cold October ground, it wouldn’t really have stopped.

It would continue in the smile and the laugh of the son he cherished, and in that he would be remembered. If she died, she wondered who would grieve. And she wished it was her instead of him.

Maybe next time it would be.

 

* * *

 

She wasn’t sure what she expected when she got home from the hospital where Hotch clung grimly to his continued existence.  Him to be sitting near her fridge maybe, or curled in her bed, wadding her best towels into his injury with his crooked grin and sheepishly guilty that he’d made another mess. Apologising for being so rude as to bleed in her home. She expected him to be there to be patched up, just like he had in the past.

Instead, she found blood. That was expected. He wasn’t there. Unexpected.

She stayed up all night, but that didn’t change.


	15. Jack

Emily had once attended a talk about living with terminal illness. It was offered as extra credit for her college course, even though it was entirely unrelated to her studies. They’d gone in a group; her companions loud and boisterous, empowered by their youth and assumed invincibility. As the talk had gone on, they’d all fallen silent. Emily had been silent from the start. Out of all of them, she was the only one with scars that attested to the fragility of their lives.

The lecturer had said one thing that had stuck with her. He’d said that there was always one last good day. One last of everything. One last kiss, one last car ride. One last smile. The problem that Emily had found, was that you couldn’t savour that last thing because sometimes it wasn’t immediately obvious that it _was_ the last.

She didn’t have that problem this night. She knew from the moment she closed her eyes in her bed and opened them in a fracturing body on the forest floor that this would be the last of something. There was no time for platitudes or for her to issue empty consolations that he would be okay. She dove into his mind with the force of a kingfisher into water and hummed along his body, assessing his injuries. And there were plenty, although none that concerned her as much as the shattered remains of his knee where a co-worker’s bullet had left his life pumping freely from the open wound.

_“Don’t walk on that,”_ she said, right before he promptly did, buckling with the red-hot searing pain of it. She almost arched with shared agony as he straightened and kept moving in a wobbly zig-zag pattern, as though he was battling his own desires against someone else’s, and losing. She tried to push through the pain to talk to him, but he was locked in his own thoughts and deaf to her. One wing dragged, a ragged hole left by another bullet that had sliced his shoulder, marring it. He ignored it also, letting branches catch at the delicate skin, and she raged at him. _“Be careful!”_ she shouted. _“You’re weakening yourself!”_

He staggered and didn’t fall, but it was close.

_“Emily,”_ he breathed quietly, almost resolutely. She lunged at that whisper, catching it and using it to drag herself closer to his mind, to his thoughts.

Suddenly, she found herself in the bizarre position of being cognitively aware of two bodies at once; her own prostrate in her bed with Sergio prowling anxiously over her, and his, stumbling through the grasping trees. _“What the hell?”_ she thought, clinging to him. It was useless. He crumbled away under her grip; as though she was trying to hold a sand castle together even as the waves drew it away. A child’s first notion of loss.

_“Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go,”_ she rambled, to him, to herself, to anyone who would fucking listen.

_“I love…”_ he whispered, and dissolved before he could finish the thought. She was still hanging to his body, his broken form, but it was unfamiliar now, and cold.

_“Out of time, witch,”_ snarled Foyet’s voice, and shoved at her viciously, pushing her back into her own mind, even as she reeled with the inevitability of it all. _“Mine now.”_

She bolted upright in her bed, sending Sergio flying, terribly aware that they’d just had a last something.

 

* * *

 

How was she supposed to tell them he was gone?

_“Emily.”_ Sergio yammered at her heels, running around her feet in a frantic figure eight as she walked into the squad-room, zombie-like, her head a thousand miles away and stumbling through a forest with a broken wing. Her team was there, clustered around Morgan’s desk, and Hotch was missing and Reid was missing and Gideon… _“Emily, stop this. Hold it together.”_

JJ straightened at the sight of her, Henry in her arms, and her blue eyes widened in horror. Blue eyes; frost eyes. Will’s were the inky blue of the still part of a river; Henry’s, somewhere in between. Did her eyes match her self? _Why is she here?_ Reid’s eyes were the green-brown swirl of a tornado sky; a warning and a promise of rough times ahead. _She should still be on maternity leave._

She blinked and they were closer, all closer, and now their eyes were the same; fear. It was the same no matter the colour.

“What’s happened?” Morgan demanded as soon as he turned and saw her, his skin greying. “You look like shit, Prentiss. Is it Hotch?” They expected the worst. How could she tell them?

“He’s gotten big,” she ended up saying weakly, looking at Henry. He kicked his feet, expression solemn. JJ’s mouth thinned into an anxious line.

“So, he should, he eats enough for two,” JJ said finally, tilting her head and studying Emily’s face. She wondered what the elf could see etched in the new lines around her mouth and eyes; lines that told the tale of the past two years better than words ever could. “He’ll be big enough soon that he and Jack can have playdates. Maybe Haley can teach him how to ride, wouldn’t that be a sight?” It was a weak attempt at offering her a possible future.

Right now, Emily didn’t really want to consider the future, not when it was so much emptier than it once would have been. In the blink of an eye, she thought of what their life could have been, together or apart, and in a second it was gone and she was as tired as if she’d lived all the possibilities while standing in the doorway of the BAU and blocking people’s paths.

Foyet wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t be content with Hotch and Reid and Gideon. He’d keep coming until her world was nothing but ashes and faded memories of the people she loved.

_Wait, what?_

“Ride?” she asked, snapping her head up and staring at the elf. Rossi, at some point, had sidled up to her and appeared to be trying to tug her bag out of her hands, guide her to a chair, pull her out of the way of the increasingly irritated looking agents sidling past. “Ride what?”

The words came slowly, and they brought Emily’s brain to a crashing halt. “Horses. Hotch said Haley’s been taking Jack to lessons, to keep his mind off of things. Why?”

Horses.

_Are you listening, Emily?_

_Emily please, tell him. Tell him what you see. He’ll die if you don’t._

“Oh my god,” she gasped, her mind slamming back into gear. She dropped her bag, Rossi making a startled noise and grabbing at it as she bolted for the stairs.

Running up the stairs, she shoved open Hotch’s office door. _Where did JJ say they were?_

Bottom drawer.

Distantly, she could hear people shouting, talking over each other. When a shadow fell over her, she was expecting Rossi.

“What aren’t you telling us again?” Morgan asked, and he sounded _pissed_. She didn’t have time to deal with that, not when a picture of Reid wearing a ridiculous cake hat slipped from her fingers and revealed Jack with dyed-dark hair grinning at the camera from the back of a mottled pony. Haley was by the pony’s flank, smiling nervously with one eye on her son. The woman from the stable, from Reid’s memories, held its head. _Reid was there._

Reid was with Jack. _Foyet_ was with Jack.

Rossi slid into the office behind Morgan, his face a thundercloud. Clearly, he’d clicked on to her monumental fuck-up in not mentioning the dreams, the message Reid had desperately been trying to get her to register. She held up the photo, on her hands and knees in front of Hotch’s desk with the contents of his drawer scattered around her, and their eyes all fell on it.

“Foyet’s going after Jack,” she told them, her voice rock-steady now that she had something to focus on other than the feeling of Reid’s consciousness dissolving through her fingers. “Reid’s been watching him for months. Wherever he is, Foyet isn’t far.” There was a moment where they might have questioned her, mistrusted her motives, but Jack came first.

“Right, Prentiss, we’re going to the hospital.” Rossi took command. “Hotch knows where Jack is. Morgan, you and JJ…”

“Nope, I’m going with Prentiss,” Morgan argued, squaring his shoulders. Emily wondered at what point Morgan had stopped being just a member of their team and had stepped up to command, because he stood like he was used to it. “Strauss will listen to you. We’ll find out what Hotch knows, if he’s in a state to talk.”

Rossi nodded after a short moment. “Right. Go. Go!” He charged off, JJ following. They could hear his voice floating back to then, faintly hollering, _“Erin!”_

“If Foyet touches that boy,” Morgan snarled as they bolted for the exit, Sergio bouncing after them, “I’ll have his throat.”

Emily thought that he’d have to get through her first. If anyone was going to finish Foyet, she wanted it to be her.

 

* * *

 

Two steps into Hotch’s hospital room, and she’d already decided that, so long as she had a say in the matter, this wasn’t going to happen again. He didn’t look like himself in the blinding white bed, surrounded by the blank walls and blinking machines. A hollow copy of the boss she respected lay in that bed, his face gaunt and lined with pain, eyes shut tightly against the glare of the world. And the _smell_. No matter how long she lived, Emily would never grow to love the bleached-clean scent of hospitals, like they were trying to futilely scrub away the tang of copper and misery underneath.

“I hate hospitals,” Morgan muttered. When she glanced at him, his lip curled back unhappily. Whatever she was scenting, he could smell it a thousand times more. “Hey, Hotch. You awake?”

Not a flicker. Emily glanced at the steady _drip-drip_ of the IV line by his bedside, the slower trickle of the painkillers next to them. Shit.

“Aaron,” Emily said loudly, swallowing hard and laying her hand on his shoulder. She could feel thick bandaging even through his clothes and the blanket stretched tightly over top of him. “Aaron, where’s Jack?”

Now his eyes flickered. They opened, hazed and dull in the bright light. Morgan tapped her arm, handing her a cup of ice chips he’d procured from somewhere, almost vibrating next to her with the urgency of their job. “Hotch, where’s Jack?”

Dark eyes blinked, then caught hers and locked on with their usual biting intensity. She raised her eyebrows slightly at him, noting with wry amusement that even drugged out of his mind, he could still pull off an intimidating glare. “Wha’ bout Jack?” he slurred, struggling to sit up. Shifting her hand to a spot on his arm she was relatively sure wasn’t injured, she pressed him back down, the crackly mattress complaining about the rough movement. It was frighteningly like pushing down a kitten, his struggles hopelessly ineffectual.

“Stop, you’re going to tear one of the millions of stitches they’ve covered you in,” she warned him. “And if you do that, they’re going to kick us out. Listen, please.” Maybe it was her sharp tone, the one that they’d all at some point started paying attention to, or maybe it was the quiet ‘please’ she added on the end, but he stilled instantly.

“We need to know where Jack is,” Morgan said softly, aiming for calm, but there was no getting around Hotch knowing something was up. Emily watched the little colour that was in his face drain away, his eyes flickering to the IV in his arm, the heart monitor to the other side. Planning.

“Nokesville,” he said finally, his voice clearing of the fog the painkillers had left in it. “He’s near the Silver Griffin Stables, a mile up the road.”

Morgan was already moving towards the door. “Call Rossi,” he called back. “We’ll meet him there.” Emily paused, touching Hotch’s hand and slipping her fingers around his palm, feeling him squeeze her hand slightly in return. She had a sudden vivid recollection of Hotch in his most casual clothes offering her comfort outside of Reid’s old apartment.

“We’re going to get him and bring him home safe, okay?” she said, and his face scrunched up horribly, fear filling it, and fucking hell if she never saw that again it would still be too soon. Fear and misery and… guilt. She mirrored, almost unwittingly, Reid’s words from the night so long ago that had pushed them all down this path: “This isn’t your fault.”

Later, she would wonder if she’d imagined the quiet answer that had floated out of the hospital room after her. She hoped she had, just as much as she doubted it: “I should have taken the deal.”

 

* * *

 

Silver Griffin Stables burned.

“Jesus,” Morgan hissed between clenched teeth as they stepped out of the SUV, eyes watering in the smoky air, flavoured with the scent of cooking flesh and the screams of trapped animals. “Don’t even try it, Prentiss. That’s witch-fire. You won’t make it five steps in the door.” She knew that, but it didn’t make it any easier to know that the building in front of them would take those inside down with it.

Sergio flashed past her, vanishing. “Be careful!” she shouted after him, her heart hammering.

_“I won’t let them burn. Locks are nothing to a cat.”_

Someone screamed. They moved towards that scream as a unit, Emily pushing aside her fear for her cat. Their weapons were out, even as coughs shook their frames, the smoke thick and choking. Emily stayed two steps behind Morgan, her heart sinking with the cold realization that if Jack had been here, he wasn’t now.

At least, she fucking hoped he wasn’t.

Her earpiece crackled. _“Local PD just cleared the home Jack and Haley have been staying in,”_ Rossi’s voice intoned grimly into her ear. _“They weren’t there, but the US Marshal assigned to them was. Deceased. We’re still en route. Status?”_

“The stables have been hit hard,” Morgan replied, clearing a corner before edging out and peering through the smoke for the source of the screaming. They worked their way around the outside of the inferno that was the stables, keeping back from the wall of heat that pushed at their sides. “It’s witch-fire. Reid doesn’t do witch-fire, Rossi.”

_“Foyet can. I want you two out until we get there—this stinks like a set-up.”_

The scream came again, and Emily caught Morgan’s eyes, resigned. They both knew neither one of them was leaving here unless they knew they couldn’t help.

“Sorry, boss,” Emily said quietly, ignoring Rossi’s splutter of anger. “We’ve got possible civilians in danger here.” As one, she and Morgan slipped the earpieces out of their ears, moving forward again.

“Hope we live to regret that,” Morgan muttered, almost to himself. Emily could see fur bristling on the back of his neck, just barely holding back from shifting.

“Not once Rossi gets hold of us,” Emily replied shortly, rounding a corner and narrowly avoiding a panicked horse galloping past with what looked like half his stall attached to the bridle rope dragging behind him. She caught a vivid flash of raw, burnt skin as the horse crashed away and felt her stomach kick uncomfortably. “Shit! Fuck.”

More horses galloped past, many of them squealing with fear and the whites of their eyes showing. Sergio followed the last, bounding up to her. _“No humanoids in the stables. Five deceased. Two horses, a cat and two owls.”_

“Sentient?” she asked.

_“If you mean the talking kind of sentient, the cat. Possibly the owls; there wasn’t enough left to scent if they were magic. The rest may not be your kind of sentient, but they knew enough to scream as they burned”_ There was a rebuke in his tone. She didn’t have time to argue semantics. _“Murder is murder, Emily. There was nothing clean in this.”_

Almost unconsciously, she reached for where Reid should have been in her mind. It wasn’t often these days that he was, but she’d never lost the habit. All she felt was a strange, dark pressure; a membranous skin that pushed back at her tantalizingly. She poked at it with a thread of her power, becoming suddenly sickly aware that she could break through easily. It called to her with an immortal voice; she knew it well. Somehow, she knew what was on the other side was nothing that she wanted. Every part of her screamed to get away from it, and she pulled back in a scrambling panic.

On the other side, darkness like a physical force. She knew that force. Knew it intimately. She’d seen Reid dance with it enough; even flirted with it herself during her time with Doyle. One day they’d all go to it gladly.

Not today though.

“Prentiss!” shouted Morgan, powering forward, snapping her out of her head.

He’d found Haley.

 

* * *

 

Stepping into the ring where once Haley had watched her son being led around on the back of a mottled pony to find her body sprawled ungracefully in the muck spoke more than anything of the inevitability of their hearts being broken. Here, unlike the dry packed earth speckled with ash and burning straw that covered the rest of the area around the stable, the sand was waterlogged and sucked at their shoes as they struggled to her body. Emily knew as soon as she saw the angle her head was at that there was no way she was alive, but they had to check.

They owed Hotch that much.

“No Jack,” Morgan said, scanning the area with his nostrils flaring, although how he could smell anything through the stink of burning confounded her. The band of fear and trepidation that had closed around her chest as soon as she’d seen smoke on the horizon eased at the knowledge they wouldn’t be carrying a child-sized corpse from here.

Sirens wailed in the distance. Morgan crouched next to Haley’s body and shifted her head slightly, lifting her mouth out of the mud and wiping her face clean with a tenderness that juxtaposed the horror of the moment.

“Derek,” Emily murmured, hating herself even as she did so. “You can’t… it’s a crime scene.”

“There’s nothing they can get from mud on her face that they can’t tell with a spell or a half-decent forensics guy,” he snapped, closing his eyes, grief for Haley and for Hotch lining his face. “And she doesn’t deserve this.” Suddenly, he froze, lowering his nose to the front of her shirt.

“Foyet?” Emily asked, shifting back on her heels and looking around. Whoever had screamed before, they weren’t now. Either they’d succumbed to the flames, or it had been a trap to lure them in without thinking. She glanced down at Sergio, who looked unruffled. If someone was burning, he would have told them.

“Jack,” Morgan said, lifting his head, and shaking. His form shifted as he shed his humanity like a dog would a coat of water, and she blinked as he stood on hind legs and snuffed at the air. It wasn’t the boxer that stood in front of her, but a heavy-set black bear, and something nervous inside her coiled away at the sight of the huge beast, his paws carefully placed as to not disturb Haley’s body.

“Ah,” she said quietly, backing away so he could move around them both. “I see you’ve moved on from canines.” He grunted in response, moving with unprecedented swiftness for his size towards the edge of the ring, leading to the forest. She followed, glancing back in time to see emergency services pulling up. A trooper stood by their car, looking over at them. He raised his arm in a hail that she ignored as Morgan’s bulk vanished into the undergrowth. “Stay by the car and lead our team in when they get here,” she told Sergio. He narrowed his eyes, but did as she asked. As she slipped in after Morgan, her eyes caught a splash of crimson on the bark of a tree they passed. This was absolutely a trap.

And they had no choice but to go.

 

* * *

 

Morgan found him first and, from the way his massive bulk froze, eyes widening, she feared the worst. When she stepped out beside him and saw the way he was lying, she knew he was dead. In all of his life, Spencer Reid had never lain in such a discarded manner; one wing crookedly sprawled across the ground, back partly propped against a fallen tree branch and his head lolling backwards loosely on a twisted neck.

The filtered light through the tree cast a macabre light onto his pallid skin, colouring it grey with blue tinged lips, offset by darker splashes of dried black on his skin and clothes. There was a pallet of colours that made that moment; a twilight grey that drained all the vibrancy from the trees, the true colour of mourning.

Emily took two halting steps forward, the silence unbroken by breathing, both of them holding their air to try and hold off the moment when one of them reached a hand down and found his pulse stilled forever. She was close enough that she could see the dark half-moon shadows his eyelashes left on his cheeks, circled by the purple smudges of exhaustion and illness.

“Spencer,” she whispered, and knew that she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t touch him. She couldn’t replace the memory of his warmth with the memory of cold, dead flesh. It would be the end of her.

His eyes snapped open.

He moved in a smooth blur that she wouldn’t have thought possible from the way he’d been lying, and she stood stupidly, for a wild moment thinking that maybe he was going to embrace her. Lightning crackled at his fingertips; she looked into his eyes and Foyet looked back.

Whoever had fired the bullet that had torn through his knee saved her life; the injury making him clumsy, despite Foyet’s control forcing him to use the damaged limb. The lightning slashed over her head, making her ears pop and eyes water, sparking against a tree and filling the area with the rich metallic scent of fried electrics and burning oak. Reid jerked up, face twisting into a snarl, and now she saw why he’d lain so broken on the forest floor. He moved like a puppet with twisted strings; exactly how she would have imagined humans would move if you took the mind from them and left them hollow. He moved like Hankel’s wight. The dead reanimated. She had to force herself to look into his eyes to make sure they were still hazel and not the sour green of the undead.

“Oh my god,” she gasped, white fingers of lightning flickering from one of his hands to the other as he aimed again. This one wouldn’t miss, he was just going to blast the floor. It would take them both out, with no regard for his safety either.

There was a roar and Reid was thrown back as Morgan charged, the two tumbling over in a flurry of wings and fur and snapping teeth. Emily felt her leg give under her as she stumbled, pushed aside by the force of the bear-shaped Morgan’s passing.

They broke apart, Reid dragging his leg and Morgan hobbling with a nasty burn up one side, and eyed each other. Morgan kept himself between Reid and Emily, as though he didn’t trust her to defend herself.  She didn’t need to defend herself. She called up an _ignis_ rune, ready to sear the circle into the ground under his feet. She’d drag him back from hell, even if she had to go down there and knock down the gates herself. He was on his hands and knees, mouth gaping as he panted, struggling to stand on what must have been a fucking mess of a knee by now. She drew the rune in her mind, raised her arm _—_

She’d only ever seen him use lightning offensively. At some point, she’d forgotten that he could draw on the power of a storm, just as much as a blizzard’s fury hid behind JJ’s sedate smile. The wind came from nowhere, and she didn’t stand a chance against it, throwing her back to the ground with a force that ripped the air from her lungs. Within seconds, she was struggling to breathe as the gale-force tore at her clothes and skin and the tiniest forest debris became shrapnel that sliced her. The temperature plummeted and the wind turned to knives; icy cold blasts that bit hungrily and seeped the memory of warmth from her skin. She opened her mouth to call for Morgan, to scream, to cast a rune, to anything, but her lips and tongue were clumsy with cold and she couldn’t fucking _breathe._

Black spots danced in front of her eyes and she gasped, left blind and deaf in the hurricane he’d created. How could she have forgotten the first thing she’d learned of him all that time ago?

_He casts at a first circle level._

She was going to die. They’d all die. Gideon could have stopped him, but Gideon was dead and gone, and they couldn’t face this power without him.

There was a throbbing yowl over the howl of the wind that made her bones ache. She fell and the winds stopped and left her shaking and wheezing on the forest floor. Alive.

Barely.

_“That’s two demons I’ve chased off for you,”_ Sergio said, his voice sounding miles away. She felt fur brushing against her cheek, her face still flat against the dirt. _“I deserve a pay-rise.”_

“Prentiss. Prentiss!” Hot hands touched her, impossibly hot, or maybe she was still fucking frozen from Reid’s magic. She blinked grit and blood out of her eyes and looked up, feeling involuntary shudders beginning to work their way through her body as it struggled to warm up to a liveable level again. Morgan leaned over her, a nasty cut across his forehead sheeting blood down his cheek and gumming his left eye shut, one arm tentatively held away from a burn along his side. “You alright?”

“We’re so fucked,” she stammered, her teeth chattering together. She reached a hand up to push hair out of her vision, found that her hairline was sticky with blood. “We can’t beat him. If I try to bind him, he’ll shatter the circle and me with a thought.”

_“I won’t let him do that.”_ That quiet comment was for her ears alone, his eyes serious and tail low.

Morgan looked grim, helping her up despite the way her legs had turned to jelly. “We have to try,” he said quietly, firmly. “He’s got Jack.”

 

* * *

 

None of them wanted to be the one who told Hotch. In the end, it was JJ.

Emily watched through the glass of the ICU window. All that was visible of JJ was her back. Hotch was in clear view. He listened with quiet calm. His face didn’t so much as twitch. He went from calm straight to breaking, and Emily was stunned to realize she was crying too. Morgan bowed his head. Rossi had his eyes closed, facing away from the window, as their leader wept as JJ told him his wife was never coming home. As she told him that they’d failed him. She placed a single consoling hand on his arm and he leaned into that touch as though seeking some comfort he’d lost. Emily looked away. This was private.

She barely registered her phone buzzing in her pocket until she pulled it out and glanced at the screen.

**Number withheld:** **+1 attachment – MMS downloading**

**Hey darling. Was spending some time with your sweetheart and the little tacker. They’re so cute together! We make a nice little family, them and I. Unfortunately, I’m not a very good daddy, so I’ve taken little Jackie-boy and sent mommy home to you. He’s going to give his regards to you and your team – I think you’ll find it shocking ; ). Tell Hotch I’ll end this when he takes my new deal – he knows the one! Kiss kiss.**

“Dave,” she said, her voice calm despite the tears still drying on her cheeks and flavouring her top lip with salt. He took the phone with a grim expression and read the message twice. The picture flicked open with a tap of his thumb, Jack staring wide-eyed up at the camera, his clothes filthy and torn. There was a hand on his shoulder, holding him still. They knew that hand.

“Right, we need to get this hospital locked down,” he said finally, looking up to Morgan. “And you all need to contact your families. Bring them into the Bureau _—_ we’ve reached endgame, and Foyet’s looking to do as much damage as he can on his way out.”

“Reid can get into the Bureau,” Morgan argued. He didn’t reach for his cell, his family safe in Chicago. This was a lonely job. The only ones they’d be bringing in were JJ’s family. Hotch had already lost his. And, Emily thought dully, she was in the process of losing hers.

  



	16. Sergio

When the attacks came, they weren’t at the hospital.

JJ was walking to the car with Will, Henry in her arms. She didn’t see him, but she knew he was there moments before the storm hit. She later told Emily that, at first, she’d smiled, because for a moment she’d almost forgotten. They were lucky. The second strike smashed into the Bureau-issued SUV they were about to climb into, leaving the upholstery smouldering and the paint white and blistering. It was over as fast as it began, the two elves easily turning the storm back on its source. Not once did they see a flicker of him.

Morgan’s house burned. He didn’t say much, just dropped his head in his hands. Someone saved his dog, and he quietly told them that was all he cared about. Emily knew he was lying.

Emily was next. They didn’t want to let her go, but when the call came she knew she had to. After all, someone had to pick up her damn cat. When she pulled up outside her apartment, this time in a mage-proof vehicle and with Rossi and two shield-mages at her side, three of her neighbours descended on her. She managed to sidle past two of them, ignoring their spluttering fury about the damage done to their homes, but the third caught her arm.

Colin Simmons, one door to her right and sharing her fire escape, smiled sheepishly at her. On his shoulder, Sergio was perched, tail lashing irritably. “Emily, hi, hello, ah…” he began, shuffling his feet. Sergio rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry, there was no damage. Freak thing really. Massive storm blew up out of nowhere, and, um, kind of centred around our apartments. Lightning almost smashed straight through my wall, gave me a frightful shock. I, ah, your cat appeared in my home, very upset.”

_“Our home is flooded,”_ Sergio complained. _“He made it rain in the living room, our poor books. I wish you’d never let him in.”_

“Why didn’t you chase him off?” she said, unfairly probably, but thinking of how Reid previously would have died before damaging a book.

“Me?” Colin said, looking confused, the same time Sergio rumbled and replied shortly, _“And get singed? He wasn’t after our books, Emily, his intentions were very much on me. I told you you’d bring destruction down on us.”_

“If it makes you feel better,” Colin said quietly, pulling Sergio off his shoulder and holding him out gingerly. “We’ll be getting a new fire escape. The old rickety thing we had got torn clean off the wall. It’s a wonder no one was killed, although I do think the two apartments under ours have some water damage… Honestly, this is really going to suck when I sell the place. Magical damage really affects the market value…”

It didn’t make her feel better at all.

 

* * *

 

“Some kid at a book signing once asked how long it would take a drain a mage’s reserves,” Rossi said tiredly, thirty-three hours into the assault. “I was younger, handsomer, and undeniably cockier. I told him a week, depending on whether the mage was light or dark.”

_“Perhaps for you,”_ Sergio replied, pacing by the doorway of the conference room. _“Emily wouldn’t last three days.”_

“Thanks, asshole,” Emily snapped, leaning back in her chair. Outside, rain battered the windows with crashing force, ominously dark and unseasonable as hell. Agents scurried about as usual, but every eye was on the windows, everyone nervous. Thirty-three hours of a gale raging around a singular building would do that. No one could do anything, because no one knew where the source of the storm was.

No one had found Reid yet.

“He can’t get in, they’ve locked him out,” Morgan said from his position on the couch, eyes closed. Cat napping, as Sergio would put it. Emily knew he hadn’t actually managed to sleep yet, none of them had. Not while Jack was out there, and no one could get out to look for him. “You say a week to drain his reserves? Jack doesn’t have that long, and the only reason Hotch hasn’t gone after them himself is the multiple stab wounds he’s still recovering from. Once they get him off the good stuff, he’ll be out of that hospital bed and throwing himself into danger before we can say, ‘stop, idiot!’”

“I said a week to drain a mage’s reserves,” Rossi corrected. “Reid’s a demon. He doesn’t have reserves, he’s basically a car battery. Once he gets the storm going, he can feed his magic off of it. So long as he’s not doing anything other than keeping the storm going, we could be getting a whole lot cosier with our little sleepover we’ve got going here.”

“I’m not hiding here like a coward while that boy is in danger,” said a soft voice. Emily turned her head, finding herself eye to eye with the cool gaze of Will LaMontagne. “From what I hear, this man likes causing pain. He’s gone after Hotch’s son, there’s nothing stopping him from coming after Henry next. What could hurt us more than taking our children?”

“Will, you can’t…” JJ began, sitting upright. She was perched on the side of the couch, staring out the window.

He bristled. “Like hell I can’t, Jennifer. He’s using water; he’s using my element to keep me a prisoner, to threaten my son.”

“You can’t stop him without…” she trailed off, flinching. Rossi stilled, his eyes darkening.

“You can stop him?” Morgan demanded, bolting upright. “Why haven’t you?”

“He’s our friend,” JJ said stubbornly, ignoring them all to focus on Will. “Don’t you forget that, William.”

“He _was_ your friend, Jen.” Will’s expression softened slightly. “But right now, he’s one step away from becoming a domestic terrorist. I might not be able to stop him, but I can stall him.”

“JJ, if this is true, we should have known hours ago!” Rossi exclaimed, his shadow twisting angrily around his feet, reflecting his mood. JJ met his gaze stubbornly, not budging. “At some point, you have to stop protecting him! How many people have to die before you people realize that? Sometimes there are no happy endings!”

The temperature in the room plummeted. “If Will goes out there and engages Reid, one of them won’t be coming back,” JJ said coldly. “We’re elves. Our magic outranks everyone in this room. But he’s a demon, our counter. If Will wants to go on some masochistic rampage to prove his masculinity, that’s fine. But at this point, the only thing it will achieve is either him or Reid ending up dead, and Foyet will still have Jack.” The argument continued, but Emily wasn’t listening. Sergio joined in, adding his voice to the cacophony of shouting. They were self-destructing, right when they needed someone to hold them together.

They needed Hotch.

No. They needed to know where Jack was. And the only one of them who could tell them that was outside, redecorating the exterior with storm damage chic.

“Going to the bathroom,” she said calmly. None of them looked at her as she left, all focused on each other and the not-so-quiet splintering of their team. Even Sergio barely spared her a glance, which was good, because if anyone was going to realize what she was going to do, it was him or Rossi.

She ran over the rune one last time in her mind and wondered if she should call her mom, or if that would take up too much of the valuable time she had between walking out of the conference room door and Rossi realizing that she’d been gone for far too long. As the door closed behind her, she studied her team one last time, memorising them in that moment of living, and adding that to the reasons she was doing this.

Just in case.

 

* * *

 

Her runes might not let her stay as completely invisible as Reid’s magic allowed him, but they were enough to make her unimportant enough that the weary looking guard at the door of the Bureau didn’t stop her as she walked past. He knew her, he saw her every day. Without that familiarity, it wouldn’t have worked. Nevertheless, she spent the entire walk between his post and the door with the back of her neck prickling uncomfortably, waiting for her name to be shouted and for him to breathlessly apologise but, _‘no one is supposed to leave without authorisation. And you’re on our ‘not authorised list.’_

A group of mages were huddled together by the door, studying the clouds overhead that ended abruptly at the edge of the parking lot, as though someone had drawn a line straight through them. They didn’t even look at her as she strode past and pushed open the door, walking right straight into a deluge. She paused on the stoop, pressing her palm against the crack of the door. The sealing rune she’d prepared on the elevator ride down hummed and sunk into the metal. It wouldn’t hold for long once someone with more power got onto it, but it meant no one would be walking unprepared into the hell she was about to call down. And it meant that she could buy more time before Rossi and her cat, or worse, _Morgan_ , got it in their heads to stop her.

Her clothes soaked in seconds, hair flattened to her skull and hung heavily on her shoulders, the pressure of the wind made her ears pop instantly. Within steps from the doors, the rain had powered down to the point that if she turned, she could barely see the shape of the building anymore, her vision hopelessly obscured by the beating downpour. Thunder boomed warningly overhead. She tensed, waiting for the following lightning strike to slam down and end this before she even had a chance to begin, but it didn’t come.

“Come on then!” she screamed into the rain, “You wanted me. Come and fucking get me!”

Wind gusted and she took a step back to steady herself as it eddied around her, dragging the rain into a funnel and sending a torrent of water from the ground to crash against the doors of the building behind her like a miniature tsunami. Now people were moving behind the glass, and she could see them pointing at her. The runes only worked while she was acting normal. Standing in a deadly conjured storm and screaming at the sky wasn’t exactly normal.

In the end, her being noticed didn’t matter, because when the wind died down and let the water settle, he was standing in front of her, soaking wet and blank eyed. She looked at the emptiness there and knew he’d kill her without a thought if this went wrong.

“Hi, Spence,” she said.

 

* * *

 

Her original plan of simply burning the rune into the ground at his feet wasn’t exactly feasible when they were standing in a foot of filthy storm water, but Emily was nothing if not an improviser. And if parking lots were good for one thing, it was for creating puddles with rainbow surfaces that had fascinated her for hours as a kid until she’d gotten older and the allure of that thin layer of oil had been replaced with the tantalizing rush that magic gave her.

_Ignis_ , she thought, and around him fire blazed, the rune flaring into life, lines and patterns forming in bursts of dancing flames on the surface of the storm water.

Reid smiled brokenly, and wind slammed into the ground around them, impossibly strong, twisting around them and ripping the air from the circle. Her witch-fire guttered in sprays of gritty droplets that got in her eyes and her mouth and tasted of petroleum. For a single teetering moment, Reid’s wind and her flames battled for dominance, a second that stretched into an eternity as both their endings rested on who won.  

The wind faltered, and she slammed her power into the _ignis_. She felt it draw at her core, like pulling a physical thread of _something_ from her very self. The power of light; the power of the casting mage. Once the circle was done, she’d have to shift to dark to undo the binding. And the biggest font of dark power here was Reid himself, and the storm he’d created. Risky as shit. He could twist that back on her; turn the circle back on her and leave her a burnt-out husk.

She didn’t have a choice now, because he snarled and the storm twisted, and she knew they’d just passed the point of no return. He knew was she was doing now, and he wasn’t going to let it happen without a fight. So, she focused her everything on the circle and thought desperately that this was it. She either walked away from here with him at her side, or they died opposing each other. Because she had no doubt that if he saw this day through and she didn’t, it wouldn’t matter if they freed him or not.

He’d destroy himself, if there was enough of him left to feel regret.

When the circle completed, she felt it: a sudden weakening of the power being drawn from her as it became a magical source of its own. The storm slowed as the circle sealed. The last sheet of rain crashed around them, the only whistling wind remaining within the fiery circle itself. She watched as Reid tried to bring rain down on the flames, to deaden the circle, but the water and the flames repelled each other, driven apart by their opposing affinities.

His eyes met hers and in them was the ghost of everyone they’d lost. “You’d bind me like he did?” he snarled, his voice intolerably bitter. “It will kill me. You’ll be fighting over me like two bitches over a bone, and I’ll be torn in half.”

“Shut up, Foyet,” she snapped. “I know it’s you talking.”

He grinned maniacally, the expression splitting his face, and she almost retched at the sight. “Oh, my love,” he said, laughing harshly, “we’re the same person now, don’t you see?”

_Not anymore_ , she thought grimly, reaching out and taking hold of the fading remnants of the storm in the air, the metal-cold tang of his lightning filling her nose and chilling her throat. It fought her, bucking in her grip, but she wrenched it towards her, closed her eyes, and threw her power into the circle. It wasn’t at all like using the Potomac. It was sharp and every part of her burned as though she was physically holding the electricity, fighting her every step of the way. She ignored it, despite feeling singed, scored, scraped bare by it. Behind her, she heard shouting, the doors bursting open.

She reached for the part of her mind that had been his and cast.

He surged it, she knew he would, but she hadn’t been ready for the sheer _power_ of it. Every part of her screamed in shock as it smashed the boundaries of her binding runes, pushing them out like a dam about to burst. It hurt. It fucking hurt. She wanted to let it go, let him out; she was being overwhelmed with his need to be _free_ and it was agony to ignore that when all she desired was the same.

He surged it again, and she was blind, eyes closed, burning, and she couldn’t survive this. She couldn’t survive holding this whipcord power of his in the circle, not when he had so much more of himself to spare than she did.

The circle flickered, buckled.

Cracked.

_The will of the caster has to be stronger than the will of the demon,_ murmured the memory of one of her instructors, and she shuddered. Hers wasn’t. She didn’t want to bind, didn’t want to confine.

“Emily!” screamed Spencer, and it was him, his voice, his pain, and she cried out with the knowledge that she was hurting him. “Please, stop! We’ll both die!”

They weren’t even to the second part of the spell yet. All she’d done so far was bind; she still had to undo what Foyet had done, and she was already shattering. Her grip slipped. The circle slid away from her, as though she’d just released the lead rope of a wild horse frantic to get away.

He surged it again and this time she wasn’t ready, the attack smashing into the circle and continuing straight for her. She watched it come blankly, half her mind still on the faltering power of her rune, the other regretting not calling her mother.

Lightning snapped through the air.

And Rossi stepped in front, the attack smashing into his shields with the force of the storm behind it, bringing him to his knees. She screamed with him, his shadow rearing and curling around him protectively, obscuring him in twisting darkness.

_“Ignore him, he’ll live,”_ snarled a voice. Sergio. He was there, by her side and in her mind, wrapping his strength around her and buoying her up where she weakened. _“You can’t stop now. You have my power—we end this the same way we began, Emily. Together.”_ And he threw himself in without regard for her heart, his wild magic engulfing hers and reigniting the parts of the circle that had almost died.

Later, she wouldn’t remember this fight. She wouldn’t remember the vicious tug of war of power that continued for longer than she could have thought possible; he striking her rune with everything he had, the hate of a murderer in his heart; and her pouring their friendship and love, everything she and Sergio could offer, into holding him.

She would have a vague recollection of brushing against the spell that bound him; of tasting the colours of her teammates’ magic woven through it. She scrabbled at them, trying to tear them away. Wild bronze, blinding white, frozen blue, a vibrant static green, her own grey lines. There were gaps where Gideon had once been. She felt the frozen blue of JJ’s magic suddenly twist and flicker away, called back to its owner, and the pain ceased slightly.

But not enough.

She would have died without Sergio, she knew that the first moment the binding kicked in, and she realized she was trying to hold something bigger than she could ever have imagined.

She didn’t feel his first life flicker, the reserves of it gone, leaving him with two.

She felt the next one dwindle, but she didn’t recognise it; although she should have, because she knew that dull ache in her chest and her wrist, knew it from that moment when he’d thrown himself between her and Doyle and lost years for her.

One left.

It choked like the last gasp of a dying motor, and he mewled, just once, and she realized.

“Sergio,” she gasped, because neither of them had the air to shout, not anymore. Soaked with sweat, she was on her knees with no memory of falling, and he was wrapped around her feet like a cooling blanket, his fur matted and sides heaving.

_“Almost there,”_ he wheezed, his voice a whisper. _“It’s almost done. Once he stops fighting it, you need to sear every part of Foyet from him as fast as possible, replace it with all you have of him. Memories, love, everything. Remind him who he is and he’ll stay.”_

“You’ll be here helping me though,” she told him, or maybe she just imagined it. She blinked sweat out of her eyes, squinting to see where Reid was. He was bowed, his hands on his knees, and he looked as wrecked as she felt. Beyond that, the world faded. Everything had shrunk to this moment, this battle, and they were alone.

_“Always,”_ Sergio sighed, and his life sighed with him, a final gasp. Another last.

He was dying.

_No._

“Fuck,” she sobbed, because she knew he was right. Reid couldn’t fight them anymore, she could finish this here.

But not at the cost of her cat.

She let go and Reid staggered but didn’t fall, the circle vanished, and she heard people around them fall quiet, as though trying to work out what had happened. Their eyes met, and through the pain and the exhaustion in them, she saw a cool regard. Nothing was stopping him from killing her now; killing her while she kneeled in front of him holding the slumped form of her familiar.

He vanished.

He’d spared her. She didn’t have the energy to wonder why.

She pulled Sergio to her face and listened to his heartbeat, and in every weak _thump_ in his slender chest was the resonations of her failure.

 

* * *

 

“Emily.” Hands touched her, tugged at her, couldn’t they see she was busy? Busy listening, busy waiting.

“Don’t,” she snapped, pulling away from the hands, but they didn’t let up. Finally, she looked up, why was it so blurry? She blinked to try and clear it and her face was hot and sticky. _Fucking rain,_ she thought numbly, and the sun was making a humid haze on the puddles surrounding her.

Hotch leaned over her, but when she cleared her vision, it was Morgan, and he looked hopelessly gentle. “Em,” he murmured, and it was his hands that wouldn’t let up. “Come on. The medics need to check you out, you’re bleeding.”

“Where’s Rossi?” she asked loudly, too loudly, because Morgan flinched, and her mouth was cloying and thick and she spat red on the ground under her. Had someone hit her? She took one hand away from Sergio’s sleek fur and pressed it to her mouth, her nose. It came away tacky. When she brushed the back of it across her ear, the same. She shook his arm off, hugging her cat close, blood on his fur from where it had dripped from her chin and blood on the ground around them from them both. The ground heaved under her as she stood and staggered, but she couldn’t put a hand out to save herself without risking Sergio, so her shoulder took the impact. Ow.

“Shit,” Morgan said from impossibly far away, his voice echoing down to her like he was shouting from inside a well. Why didn’t he come closer to talk to her? She couldn’t hear him. Actually, she was glad he was so far away. With every word, her head split like he was driving nails into it instead of words. If he got closer, she might pass out from the nauseating pain of it.

“Tell him to shut up,” she told her cat, looking down at him. He slept, blissfully ignorant of how annoying the world had gotten. She was tired. Sergio would tell him to fuck off, he was good like that. He always protected her.

Always.

“Serge?” she asked, using the non-bloody hand to wipe her blood from his fur. He hated being dirty. There was more on his face, on his black nose and his open mouth, his tongue painted with it. How had she gotten it there? A hand covered hers, reaching for her cat, pressing two delicate fingers behind his front leg. The pair to that hand touched her arm, her shoulder, her chin. Tilting her head back to peer into her eyes. Blue filled her vision, soft and hard all at once. Ice and snow.

“Pretty,” she mumbled, and JJ should probably stop tilting her head back now because it felt like falling.

It was falling.

The black wasn’t as nice as the blue, but it was peaceful.

 

* * *

 

She woke in a hospital bed with Sergio laying across her heart. She didn’t breathe until she could be sure that the soft rise and fall of his chest was his and not her own. When he snuffled slightly in his sleep, turning so she could see the small shaved patch of skin where they’d taken blood, she let the air out in a harsh gust, relief making her careless.

“That was a neat trick you played back there,” said a low voice by her ear. “Giving us the slip. You know what the first thing Morgan said when he realized? He said, ‘She and Reid deserve each other. They’re both determined to see us bury them.’”

Her head only twinged a little when she turned to look at her mentor, thankfully. He was sitting in the hard-backed chair by her bed, a book held loosely in one hand, and the other arm in a sling. She focused on the shiny-red skin of one side of his face, a fresh burn, as she answered. “He didn’t actually say that.” Up went the eyebrow. She’d found over the past two years that she could estimate his level of irritation by how high his eyebrow went.

This one was gonna bite.

“You’re right,” he said, leaning toward. The chair complained under him, squeaking unhappily. “I believe the first thing he said was along the lines of, ‘If that woman gets herself killed, I’m going to drag her back from hell just to kick her scrawny white ass.’”

Sergio shifted again. She reached for her magic, to touch against his mind and check if he was okay, but there was nothing left. She was hollow.

It was terrifying.

“He called me a woman?” she asked, because continuing this calm, light-hearted conversation was better than feeling that nothingness where her magic had been.

Rossi smirked. “No. I paraphrased.” The smirk vanished like it had never been. “Your magic will come back, Prentiss. Give it a day. You drained it. You were damn lucky you stopped when you did, that was almost the end of you.” There was a _but_ in his tone.

“But?” she asked, because he’d fallen silent like he was uncharacteristically holding something back. He didn’t answer, just reached for her hand. For a wild moment, she thought he was going to hold it, but he placed his fingers gently over her wrist and turned it so she could see.

Pale, unblemished skin. The rune was gone. The rune she’d carried for almost twenty years.

Sergio slept on, unaware that their link was irreparably broken.

She was truly alone now.

 

* * *

 

Strauss reluctantly let them leave once Emily was released from the hospital with firm instructions to _rest_ , but some of them had nowhere to go. Morgan didn’t speak to her when she entered Rossi’s house. She was almost too tired to appreciate the tasteful art on the walls or the shelves of leather bound books. He just nodded in greeting, and stared at the flickering TV. He was wearing pyjamas that clearly weren’t his, and that should have been hilarious. She didn’t laugh.

She carried her still-unconscious cat to the guest room, lay him out on the bed, and curled around him, counting the beats of her heart between now and him waking.

 

* * *

 

_“Why are you crying?”_ At the sound of her cat’s voice, she jerked upright, rubbing a hand across her tear-damp face and choking back a startled sob. “You’re alive,” she whispered, reaching her hand out to delicately touch his muzzle, his cheek, the fur she loved slipping through her fingers.

His tongue rasped across her trembling fingers, tasting the tears. _“Of course. I had no intentions of leaving you to muddle through life alone, you’d be sure to make a mess of it.”_ It would be more reassuring if his voice wasn’t a faded whisper, merely the memory of his former strength. His magic trickled weakly under her palm, fading. She had a horrible feeling that when it faded completely, lost with his lives, his itchy, irritating voice would be gone with it.

And she hadn’t realized until now how much she needed him.

Now she was angry, the effect of her righteous fury ruined by the tears that still stained her cheeks. “You fucking idiot moggie, you _died_. You do realize what you’ve done, don’t you?” She thrust her wrist under his nose, the bare skin where their familial bond should have been. Gone; shattered with her circle and her cat, leaving her so fucking alone right when she needed him most.

His eyes slipped shut. _“Yes. There’s always a price, little witch. I’m tired.”_

She was too. But she didn’t want to sleep, in case there was more damage she couldn’t see, and he slipped away while she was resting. “You’ve only got a glimmer of magic left,” she said softly, tickling his chin. “And still fading. What happens when it’s gone?”

_“Nothing. I’ll remain as I always have been. A cat; no more, and no less. Quieter, no doubt. It’s time you moved on to more glamorous creatures than I, anyway. I’m too lazy to be a first circle mage’s familiar, and you’re too strong to be anything but first circle. The time may come that this is a blessing. Now let me sleep, and stop being fatalistic. ‘Nemo nisi per amicitiam cognoscitur’.”_

That term needed no translation. She knew it as intimately as she knew him. The sound of it reminded her of the entirety of her future stretching in front of her, without him by her side. “No one learns except by friendship,” she said, closing her eyes and letting the pain linger, just a little bit longer.

_“Indeed. And our friendship remains. Familiar or not, you remain my little witch.”_

Her cat was an asshole.

And, without him, she was lost.

 

* * *

 

JJ never rang. She always texted. She said it gave them more time to prepare for the day, for the horrors. This time, she rang.

“Emily,” she said quietly, her voice echoing. Emily stared at Sergio, sleeping peacefully on the pillow on the empty side of the bed, murmured her assent. “Hotch checked himself out AMA. He’s going after Foyet. Alone.”

Emily stared at her cat and knew how he felt. In the end, they were all going to be alone.

 

* * *

 

She needed to stop underestimating David Rossi.

“Should you have access to that spell?” Morgan asked, sitting rigid with tension in the passenger seat as Rossi flew through the sparse midnight traffic, making liberal use of both the horn and his voice in telling other commuters what he thought of them. His palm glowed, guiding him towards their wayward team leader. The spell that had failed them when Reid had gone missing, making up for that now in leading them straight to the heart of their fractured team.

“Nope,” Rossi said tersely, glancing to the side before running a red light with the slightest upward twitch of his mouth, indicating that he was probably enjoying this. Emily sank her fingers into what she had now termed the ‘oh shit Rossi’s driving’ bar over her head, and hung on grimly as the seat-belt bit into her shoulder and breast. “Special circumstances, don’t you think?”

“You know it’s a federal offence to hack into GPS spells, right?” Morgan continued, right before Rossi wrenched the wheel violently to the left. The wheels protested, Emily protested, and Morgan’s head smacked into the glass on the window with a soft _thunk_.

Now Rossi smiled, although it didn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, tell that to Garcia. If you don’t think she’s tracking us every time we step foot in the field, you don’t know her as well as you think you do. By the way, hold on.”

They braced this time, but it was a close thing. “Where are we even going?” Emily asked, when her stomach climbed back down her throat and settled into its regular place. “Where would they have gone?”

Rossi glanced at his hand. “Hotch’s home,” he said quietly. “The one he shared with his family. I think they’re going there. Morgan, contact JJ. We’re going to need her. Prentiss, I want you behind us at all times. You haven’t got your full magic back yet.” She watched him in the rear-view mirror. He avoided eye contact, his own gaze shifting a minuscule amount downwards.

Liar.

They weren’t taught to rely on one skillset. Guns could jam. Magic could be countered. She had enough magic back to shield, and she had her weapon. That wasn’t at all why he wanted her at the back. “Reid,” she guessed, and Morgan’s head snapped around to stare at Rossi, one hand braced against the window as they violently assaulted another corner.

“Yes,” Rossi said quietly. “It’s over, Emily. You don’t have enough in you to make another circle, and you don’t have Sergio anymore. Neither of them are going to give us a chance to bring them in alive. If he is in your sights, you take the shot. That’s an order.”

“And he dies a monster,” Morgan said. His face was tortured, his shoulders stiff and hunched forward. He grieved already; Emily knew in that moment that he wouldn’t hesitate when the time came. Emily stared at the cords of his neck, tense enough to snap, and wondered what her own face looked like, because she was numb enough that she couldn’t tell.

“They’ll bury him a hero,” she said dully. “Standard procedure. Full honours as benefits an agent lost while on duty. And they’ll date his death as the ninth of February two thousand seven.”

Rossi nodded. “As though it never happened,” he added, and she couldn’t tell if he agreed with that or not. She touched the holster of her gun, the cool metal underneath the covering.

And she wondered if she could do it.

 

* * *

 

There was a swing on the tree outside Hotch’s home. A fucking tree swing, just like Emily had always wanted but had never been allowed to have because ‘ladies don’t play on swings, Emily.’ She stared at that swing as they took their positions around the gaping front door, weapons out and ready to move in. She memorised the colour (yellow), the tree (maple), and the scuff marks underneath where the young owner (Jack) had run his sneakers through the soft dirt and thought about dinner and homework and whether his father would be home for Halloween this year.

She thought of Hotch on a ladder, in his casual clothes, hanging the swing up. Checking the knots twice, because he was nothing if not rigorous about procedure. Smiling and laughing, climbing down to Haley’s arms. Beaming as Jack tried it out the first time, teaching him how to kick his legs. Maybe even teaching him out to twist the two ropes together to spin the swing around until the boy was giddy and giggling and couldn’t walk straight.

“Ready?” Morgan asked her. JJ was with Rossi, taking the back. The elf’s expression had remained impassive as Rossi had informed her that the only ones leaving this scene alive tonight were their team and Jack. She was firmly in agent mode, no expression betraying her loyalties. Emily had no idea what she would do if faced with that shot; just like Emily herself, she was a wildcard. Reid’s survival tonight solely remained a question of who found him first.

“Yes,” she said in reply to Morgan’s question.

It was a lie.

 

* * *

 

They found Hotch. Alive. Bloodied, but alive, and his eyes were wild. Seconds later, they found Foyet. Hotch had him cornered like a terrier with a rat, but the mage was smiling. Hands held loosely in the air, wrists limp, almost fucking mocking. He smiled and it was a shark smile, one giggle away from laughing, and Emily wanted to see him bleed in that moment.

Bleed more, anyway. There was a lovely gash across his mouth that matched the bruises on Hotch’s fist, and her heart sang at the sight of it. _More, you bastard_ , she thought grimly, fanning out around the grinning Foyet. _By the time we’re done, all you’ll know is pain._ They weren’t terriers after all but hounds, and they had their fox cornered.

She knew what hounds did to foxes when they brought them to bay.

“Oh, well, this is a _party_ ,” he said, opening his mouth and leaning forward, leering at them. “Darling Prentiss, so glad you could make it! My friend has missed you so _—_ he’ll be so glad to know you’re here! And David Rossi, what an _honour_.”

“The honour is entirely mine,” Rossi snarled, and his shadow crept up the wall behind him, in the form of nothing that Emily knew, but it was spiked and bristling and she could make out teeth that widened hungrily. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this day.”

“Jack,” said Hotch, falling back so he was shoulder to shoulder with both Rossi and Morgan. Emily stood a few steps behind, closest to the door. JJ on the far right, frost forming around her feet. “I don’t know where Jack is.”

“Oh, Jackie boy?” Foyet crowed, eyes glittering. He moved slightly, ignoring the four gun barrels aimed firmly at him, seemingly indifferent to his death in their hearts. As he shifted, Emily caught a whiff of rotting flesh and almost gagged. “He was bored, so we decided to play a game. Hide and Seek _—_ he said he was very, very good, Aaron. So, I sent him off to hide. Fair warning _—_ I added a lovely little curse that means if you kill me, I’ll be taking your sweet little boy with me to re-join his mother.”

“You fucking _—_ ” spat Morgan, lowering his gun very slightly to turn to Rossi. “This sonofabitch!”

“Oh, don’t be like that, mutt. If the boy manages to hide for…” Foyet made a big show of glancing at his wrist, tapping at the skin, “twenty minutes, the spell disengages. I do so love games. He has six to go, by my count. But if he’s found… well. I hope he’s as good at hiding as he says he is. Child sized coffins are the heaviest burden to carry.”

“So, we hold you here for another six minutes,” Rossi said, jerking his head in a silent command. His shadow flung itself off the wall in a liquid wave of black, twining around Foyet’s legs to his waist, and pinning him in place.

“Move and I bite,” she warned, her voice thunderous.

Foyet sighed, pressing the back of his hand against his forehead like he was exhausted. Emily had seen that look before; usually on Rossi’s face when she messed up a spell or failed to grasp whatever complex mechanism he was trying to explain to her. “Did I say I was the seeker?” he said with a smile.

Emily was out the door in a heartbeat, hearing Hotch’s footsteps sounding out heavily behind her. “Reid!” he roared, sliding to a stop at the top of the stairs and glancing around wildly. “Spencer, don’t hurt him!”

She took the stairs three at a time. Behind her, she could hear JJ calling Jack’s name.

Now they were really racing.

 

* * *

 

She left the house to the man who knew it best, the man who’d probably played this very game with his son in the rooms and the hallways Jack had grown up in. Taking to the yard, she leapt the fence with almost reckless abandon, frantically scanning the shadowed bushes and trees for any cosy hidey-hole a boy of six could hide in.

Three minutes now.

“Jack!” she called, her voice cracking, jogging to the centre of the yard and spinning slowly. Every nerve in her body was firing as adrenaline pumped through her, screaming at her to _move faster_ , but she knew if she rushed this, she could miss him. The moon slipped around from behind a cloud, barely a sliver, but the silver light still caught the dew on the grass and illuminated the puff of her breathing. It didn’t illuminate a frightened boy.

Two minutes.

“Shit,” she muttered, turning back to the house. There was no cry of relief from inside, no gunfire to sound the ending of Reid’s life. No scream to sound the ending of Jack’s.

She missed Sergio.

There was the scuff of a shoe on dew-damp lawn, and she spun, gun in her hands in an instant, and found Reid in her sights. He smiled when he saw her. It was his most charming smile; it was the smile he’d used on her when he’d suggested _Solaris_ on her fire escape. It still made her heart tighten. Jack was in his arms.

He wasn’t moving.

“Oh god no,” she gasped, and her gun didn’t waver. “Spencer. Spence, love, please. Give him to me.” _Please be breathing, please be breathing_ , she begged in her mind. Reid looked down at him, shifting him as though his weight was heavy. He was favouring his injured leg, resting heavily on the right. She could shoot that and bring him down. No. A non-lethal shot would give him time to…

“He’s alive,” Reid said monotonously, as though he was remarking on the weather. There was dried blood on his face and neck from their earlier confrontation. “He fell from a tree. I actually think I taught him that. To climb trees to hide, not to fall from them.” He laughed, a single coughing bark of a laugh. It was empty of humour. “No one ever looks up, right, Emily?”

“Give him to me,” she said again, and stepped forward. “Let me see if he’s okay. You don’t want to hurt him.”

His head cocked to the side, he examined her carefully, thoughtfully. The moonlight made his skin grey and when he shifted his wings so they stood, still folded but slightly away from his shoulders, they gleamed silver and brown, stained with old blood. His eyes were shadowed, almost black. The effect was frightening. He was a demon holding a blue-tinted child who lay as still as though carved from marble. A scene from a child’s nightmare.

A scene from any parent’s nightmare.

“I don’t want anything anymore, but I’m not going to let you shoot me,” he said calmly, his voice still hollow of emotion. “I’ll kill him before the bullet touches me, you know I can. Children are so fragile.”

“Once you would have died rather than hurt him,” she countered, taking another careful step forward. The sound of her boot on the grass was horridly loud to her ears, as though she’d stamped instead of carefully placing her heel. He sucked in his cheek, as though he was chewing at the inside, a nervous tic that was so familiar she almost felt relief at seeing it.

“People change,” he said finally, shifting Jack again. The boy’s head lolled, rolling in her direction so she could see the slightly open lips, so perfectly shaped, and the chubby cheeks of the young. Everything they did their job to protect; absolute innocence. “Self-actualization. We seek to fulfil our full potential. I would never have reached mine without the freedom I’ve been given.”

“This isn’t freedom,” she pleaded.

A bruise marred Jack’s forehead, dirt on his chin mixed with blood, and his eyelids were dark shadows that shielded his closed eyes. It was no small comfort that if this went wrong, if she fucked this up, he wouldn’t know his death. He wouldn’t know anything past the moment his bare foot had slipped on the slick bark of the tree he’d probably climbed a thousand times before.

It had only been minutes. It felt like an eternity. Why had no one come out here? Why was she alone with this choice? Except, it wasn’t really a choice at all. She knew now that if it was an option, she would have shot him in that moment and held him as he died, her final act of love.

But that wasn’t an option. She couldn’t risk Jack like that.

She lowered her gaze as though broken and studied the ground under his feet. She wouldn’t have time to bind him, nor the power. She had to move straight to ripping Foyet out of him, while he was, if not at full power, still a lot stronger than she was, and without the binding of her circle to protect her from his rage. But, if he was focused on pushing her out, he couldn’t hurt Jack.

At least something good had come of today. Without the rune at her wrist, Sergio wouldn’t feel her die.

She was grateful for that blessing.

“Sorry, Dave,” she mumbled under her breath, knowing he’d never know she’d spoken the words. Lifting her gaze, she dropped her gun and stepped over it, striding towards him, her arm tucked against her side as though winded, tracing a simplified pattern of the rune she’d spent a year creating on the soft skin. If her rune was a symphony, she was merely humming it, but the tune was still recognisable.

He blinked, startled, tried to limp back. “What are you doing?” he asked with painful curiosity. He could have killed Jack in that moment, but she knew he wouldn’t. She was no threat without a gun, her magic guttering so low that he knew there was little she could do.

Or, so he thought.

She supposed that maybe it helped that there were tears on her face. She didn’t hide them. Being strong didn’t mean never crying, and besides, the tears weren’t just for her. They were for Jack, for Haley, for Spencer Reid, who was going to die tonight, and her with him, because she was doing this without any of the safeguards they’d created. For Hotch, who would still be a father, and for Rossi, who would no longer be her teacher. For JJ and Morgan who were losing two friends. For Sergio, who would continue as he’d never wanted to, without her.

For herself, because she didn’t want to die. She liked life; she loved living.

“I love you,” she said, within arm’s reach of him, and his eyes narrowed suspiciously, his grip tightening on the unconscious child in his arms. “Please remember that.”

“Is this the final hug before you walk away?” he sneered. “That’s pathetically sentimental, isn’t it, Prentiss?”

Her palm ignited with the burning touch of the rune, and she touched it to his hip, almost an embrace. The other rested on the hand that held Jack’s head, the boy’s dyed-dark hair slipping through their fingers. He didn’t stop her because he didn’t think she was a threat. He believed she could never hurt him.

Showed what he knew.

She cast before he could react, feeling his mind open to her as soon as the rune connected with the coolness of his skin, and she felt the presence she’d felt at the stables as she’d searched for him; death lingered in his soul, waiting for Foyet to relinquish his hold, and she looked into it and saw nothing.

_“I never wanted to die with you,”_ she sent wildly, feeling his confusion, his shock, and then she threw them both into the dark, leaving the world and everyone they loved behind them.


	17. Death, meet David Rossi

He’d once had a student who, to try and get out of an examination, had magicked himself blue. When they’d tried to fix it, something in the spell had gone awry and he’d spent the next two years of his life a lovely pearlescent yellow. Rossi had laughed himself sick, and then made him take the examination anyway. To celebrate that student passing, he’d given him a banana. He’d long been of the opinion that students, without exceptions, were idiots.

Emily Prentiss, despite being a cool twenty years older than the usual freckle-faced twenty-somethings Rossi usually had foisted his way, was proving to be every bit as stubbornly daft as every last one of those students. But he’d thought even _she_ wasn’t stupid enough to cast a dark affined spell without safeguards, without a circle, and without a familiar to ground her.

Oh, how wonderfully fucking wrong he was.

“If you don’t shut up,” he snapped at Foyet, the man grinning at him like Rossi had offered him a handful of candy instead of the end of his gun, “I’m going to see just how many places my familiar can bite. Precious places. Places you’ll never use again when you’re rotting on death row. _Shut up_.”

Foyet opened his mouth to say something stupid and Rossi started counting. Counting, he’d found, was a wonderful way to not murder the people in his life who frustrated him. Which was everyone. Often. Especially Prentiss (oh, especially Prentiss). Maybe it wasn’t her fault. Maybe he was just getting cranky in his old age. They were interrupted by the ground lurching under them. Rossi staggered, Foyet fell, smacking his head against the floor. Rossi would normally have laughed at that but, as the rattling of photo frames against walls and rumbles of things hitting the ground ceased and Foyet lifted his head, he came to the quick conclusion that things had very probably just gone fantastically wrong. And he’d bet his best shoes that his co-worker slash student slash professional-pain-in-his-ass was right at the centre of it.

“Eris,” he said, and pushed back a surge of irritation at the realization that he was going to have to fucking go and fix whatever the woman had just broken. He supposed there was always the possibility that she’d done something right; she was far more capable than he often gave her credit for, but after the stunt she’d pulled earlier, Rossi wasn’t feeling particularly charitable. Not until his facial hair grew back and the peeling had stopped anyway.

Eris swirled around Foyet, wrapping around his hands and tighter around his feet until he was pinned like a stabby burrito, both of them ignoring his squawking. As far as Rossi was concerned, after the past two hellish years, Eris should have squeezed tighter.

“Got him, boss,” she said, blinking up at him with eyes of whirling grey. “He can’t move, he can’t cast. We’ll have a little chat in here while you go and play with the children.” He had something witty to say in reply to that, something beautifully clever no doubt, but he was cut off.

Someone screamed.

Rossi ran.

 

* * *

 

He wasn’t actually sure what he’d expected. Maybe Prentiss had blown up Hotch’s kitchen. Maybe Jack actually had a store of bootleg fireworks and had taken things into his own hands. Hell, with this team, he wouldn’t even be surprised if Morgan had worked out how to shapeshift into some sort of sentient muscled cannon. What he absolutely had not expected was to overtake Hotch on the stairs (and maybe he was expecting it, really, because he leapt the bannister with the reckless abandon of a man who’d been scared to shit), race past Morgan (who didn’t look horrified like he should have if he’d known) and then JJ at the backdoor, her gun out _—_

And that was when their palms burst into pain. Rossi fucking _hated_ those goddamn runes on their hands. They were ugly, irritating, and he sometimes forgot his was there and activated it while scratching his nose, burning the words _fidelity bravery integrity_ into his retinas. He hated them for that, and because some of the worst parts of his life had involved this inescapable pain; the kind that made his palms sweat (and there was another reason to hate them: they made his gun slippery right when things were going wrong) and sent hot flashes of panic up his spine to dry his mouth and cause his forehead to bead up with perspiration.

This time the pain didn’t last long though. A second after the scream had faded from hearing (he didn’t know that scream, but it was masculine and adult and those two things pointed to Reid being the screamee), the runes went cold. And he knew, with a gut wrenching horror that left him winded, that she was dead.

He didn’t slow down though because, his smart assed-ness aside (and you were an ass to her today, Dave, you were an ass and you knew this could happen, this thing you’ve been dreading/expecting), she was his student, graduated or not, and yeah, he probably really fucking cared about her. It was his job to protect her and he’d let her leave that room knowing what could happen.

The cool air stung on the flushed-hot skin of his face as he cleared the back door in two great strides, deaf to his team following, and found them on the lawn. He didn’t see them fall and somehow that made it worse. They were already motionless on the ground, three of them (fuck, three, fuckfuck), their limbs tangled together limply and her dark hair escaping from its ponytail to fan out around her head like old blood.

“Dave?” called Aaron, right behind him (stop him Dave, that’s Jack lying in the middle, and he’s not moving). Rossi reached out and grabbed his arm right as Aaron stumbled, and he knew he’d seen the small form cradled in Reid’s arms, with Emily’s head on his shoulder, almost covering him. “Oh god. Oh god no.”

JJ had no such reservations. One day, once this pain had ceased and the crushing panic let him breathe again, he’d buy her a fruit basket or a punching bag or something to thank her for how calm she managed to be, even when everything had gone to absolute shit. She ran past, and he had to hand it to her, she had more fortitude than he did, pushing Prentiss’s (Emily; call her Emily you unfeeling old bastard) body aside with tender gentleness, resting her hand against Jack’s throat.

“He’s alive, Aaron,” she called, her voice as calm as an iced over lake in the dead of winter, and Aaron was moving again. Running, falling to his knees so heavily that Rossi felt the thump reverberate through the soft ground, gathering his son in his arms (and Reid’s arm dropped heavily, a dead weight, Emily slumping forward into his chest, and it made Rossi’s gut lurch even though he saw the dead daily), pulling him close and tucking his mouth and nose against the front of his chest as though he could never bear to let him go again. Rossi watched with fixed quietude as JJ twisted on her bent foot, and those hands moved on to Emily. They didn’t shake once.

He thought, as he had when he’d began with the team so long ago, that everyone who believed that Prentiss was the hard-ass of the BAU was wrong. She was, in her own manner, but she was also vulnerable in so many ways. It was JJ who rarely flinched; JJ who dealt unfailingly with everything the job threw at her. Just like she did now. That hand slid away from Emily’s still throat, and JJ closed her eyes, just for a moment, before catching his gaze. There was the sorrow. There was no reassurance.

There was no life.

He stepped forward. Aaron hadn’t seemed to click yet, he was still holding Jack (and bleeding, he’s torn something, fucking idiot) and glancing from Emily to JJ with an expression of exhausted confusion. JJ turned to Reid, even though _now_ her hand shook slightly as she searched for a pulse they both knew she wasn’t going to find. JJ was fond of Emily, they were friends, but she _loved_ Reid and he’d seen it before and he saw it then. He’d been constantly shocked for almost two years now about the insane depths of love these people had for each other.

Rossi had lost people before, good people, people he loved so fucking much it hurt (and now Emily is another, but you never told her that), and there was something he’d forced himself to do every time, in the hopes he would finally learn to appreciate those around him in their living instants. He looked down into her dark, sightless eyes and memorised this moment. He didn’t want to. His last memory should have been of the stubborn shape of her chin and that pretty mouth of hers when she’d dug her heels in on something, or even the way she smiled with her whole face when she was happy, or maybe the careful way she presented herself to the world; poised and serious until no one who would judge her was looking and she could let her giddy playfulness show.

Now his last memory of her would be she and him laying together on the lawn, both their hearts broken (literally and figuratively, and isn’t that so disgustingly poetic), and they were even fucking holding hands like Rossi didn’t have another reason to be sad _—_

They were holding hands.

JJ made a mewling noise and sat, curling her knees to her chest like she was shattering, because even the strong broke sometimes (and Gideon was proof of that), and Rossi dropped to his knees next to her and touched those interlocked fingers. Still soft, still pliable, not long dead.

Still warm.

Hazel eyes watching him unblinkingly, except when he looked up into Reid’s slack face, he wasn’t looking at him at all. He’d died looking at her, with their hands locked together, and why? What had she done? There was the faintest hint of a grin on Reid’s face. He’d died on the brink of a revelation, even though he’d screamed. Her other hand, on his hip. Unlike the hand that held Reid’s, this one refused to budge when Rossi tugged at it.

“Dave, stop,” JJ whispered, and Morgan wasn’t saying anything, and he heard Hotch groan as though he’d just realized.

“Emily?” Hotch asked, leaning forward, and Rossi ignored him as he wrenched at her hand. JJ hissed angrily, grabbing his arm.

“Show some respect!” she snarled, and her fingers bit like ice, but Emily’s hand still wasn’t moving, and he was beginning to have one of those crazy realizations that hit him like drinking spirits did; leaving him feeling completely sober until he stood and the world spun around him. Tilting her chin up so he could examine her eyes, her dark endless eyes that had scowled at him and laughed with him and learned from him, and _yes_.

A spark, a tiny flicker of something.

His cheek stung like someone had hit him, and he was way too goddamn old to consider doing this. Of course, he was also far too old to bury a woman twenty years his junior (enough to be his daughter, and he’d fooled himself sometimes pretending she was _—_ oh, how pathetically lonely he could be) and with five times his potential, or the man she’d died loving.

_“Eris,”_ he called, (what about Foyet? She’s holding him), and she looked through his eyes and _tsk_ ed at what she saw.

_“How long gone?”_ she asked, and squeezed Foyet’s shoulders considering. _“I’ll have to let him go.”_

_“We can catch up to them still. Do it. They’re worth more than revenge. We’ll catch him again.”_

And he smiled at his team, ignoring their tears and their grief, taking a single moment to enjoy their confusion at his grin. Eris dived down from the second floor, flowing down the wall like snow from a tipped roof, and pooled around them on Hotch’s neglected lawn, forming the roughly remembered shape of the rune Emily had poured her soul into.

“What are you…?” Hotch asked, and then he turned and his eyes widened when he realized what Rossi had done. “Foyet!”

“Back in a mo’,” Rossi announced cheerily, pouring his magic into the rune Eris had made (and you’re not a rune mage, Dave, not at fucking all, but Emily had taught him that they didn’t always have to be what they were), and sending his mind and his magic down after them, his familiar following. All the light was gone where they went, but he didn’t care.

He’d always loved the dark.

 

* * *

 

He shouldn’t have been so mad at Prentiss. Every dark affined mage, at some point during their training, found this place. They worked from nature, from the power contained within the very world itself, and what was bigger than death? Rossi himself remembered being dared to go as far as he could down into the dark. Down to where the black was so absolute it pressed in on his ears as a physical pressure; like he’d filled his ears with cotton buds; where there wasn’t even the memory of sunlight. And the cold! It was as cold as… well, the dead.

He hadn’t gotten far, it was much too terrifying even for him, but his teacher had taken him down another time and shown him that it wasn’t so much the absence of light that blinded him, but more the fact that he just hadn’t learned how to open his eyes.

When he opened his eyes now (and he was a damn sight better at this than Prentiss _—he_ still held his body, his consciousness fully aware of JJ by his side and Aaron shaking him. Fuck off Aaron, that shirt is new), he could see. If he looked up, he saw himself sitting sedately next to his team. If he looked down, he saw a darkling floor and two pale points of grey that he plunged for, unravelling like a cheap ball of wool. Eris held him, calm and steady, and he knew she wouldn’t let him fall. Absolute trust in one’s familiar; one of the greatest assets a mage could possess.

It was fascinating how people looked within themselves. He could see his team clearly, despite the impassable distance between them (because they couldn’t follow him here yet, they weren’t of the dark), and it was difficult to look away in order to continue his freefall. JJ was a prismatic blaze of light so white it shone blue. What he’d seen of her power before now was simply the tip of the iceberg; her magic extended deeper and wider than her surface suggested. Morgan was a deep warm bronze glow, and he knew if he went closer and focused, he’d see the wild in him. Unlike JJ, he wasn’t made of angles and edges, but instead his form flowed smoothly into the world around him, more a part of the earth and land than he was the air. Even Hotch gleamed with his own light. It was both dimmer and brighter than his teammates. Humans had magic all of their own, and his soul sang, a baritone to Jack’s quieter soprano.

Behind them, like a cloud of fuel spilled in a clean ocean, he could see cruelty rolling towards them. Foyet. He didn’t have time to help them; they were on their own. But they were competent _—_ he trusted them to keep themselves safe. He turned his back on them and looked for the points of (not light or dark, but something nameless that hung between the two) grey, closer now, but still out of reach. Close enough now he could see them. Neither glowed, although he could see the spider-webbing tapestry of runes that played on Prentiss’s skin; shifting and changing like the night sky viewed from underwater. Only the living knew light.

“Prentiss!” he roared, his voice booming. She couldn’t have hoped to match it. It was a point of pride to him that in this at least, he was still the master. Although he had a horrible feeling that over the next ten years, she’d surpass him in countless other skills. It was the curse of the old to be overtaken by the young, he supposed.

A flicker of dulled awareness, still out of reach, and they were deep enough now that Rossi knew the memory of breathing was beyond him. Nothing this low breathed.

“Not fast enough, boss,” Eris said wryly, and swept past him. “I’ll get them.”

“You idiot!” he yelped, feeling the link between him and his body shudder as she released it. Around his physical self, there was bickering. Good to know they could still bicker while half their team were in mortal danger, fucking _Christ_. “You’re holding us!”

Ignoring him, she was an owl, a whale, a diving bird, all at once, and she cut smoothly through the dark, leaving a rippling wake behind her. She was _glorious._ She caught them and he flinched as the three figures collided, slowing together, knowing full well how uncomfortable it was to have the idea of shadowy talons tearing into your soul and clinging grimly on. Faintly, he heard a protesting shriek that he knew and smiled to hear again. And they were falling without a guide rope, until they weren’t, and Rossi blinked in shock, dipping slowly to catch up to the stalled shapes so close beneath him, looking back up to see what had caught them.

Teeth in his leg, his arm, his torso. Wherever he thought they might be, they were there, and they hung on with all the tenacity of a bear to salmon, or a cougar on a bucking mare, or one brawling dog to another. It sunk in and held him with the promise of never letting go.

“How the hell did you follow me?” Rossi asked Morgan in disbelief, but the man couldn’t hear him. He peered around him. “And you! JJ, what the hell!?” She was a spiral of frozen fractals anchoring them to themselves, spreading around where Morgan ended and sinking deep into the physical earth, unshakeable.

This fucking team. This _fucking_ team. None of them, not a single one, had any idea of the power they wielded together, how inescapably unique it was. They just did things and didn’t think about how wonderful the things they had just done _were_. Although, he suspected Aaron had an inkling.

“Interesting,” Eris said as he slipped alongside her. Emily glared at him with all the force of Elizabeth Prentiss’s daughter, and he could have whooped to see that scowl. Reid was in her arms, curled against her, but he was a fading whisper and dimming by the moment. He and Eris glowed with _alive_ but both Prentiss and Reid were shrouded, as though there was a veil between them and his eyes. He had to brush that veil aside, pull them through it. But he couldn’t. That was absolutely up to them. He was merely the rope ladder to life, if they chose to climb it.

_“You’re risking your life for us!”_ Emily snapped, fire and ice in her voice even though it was a whisper. _“Get out of here—I used too much, too fast, we’re dead, Dave. You can’t save me from everything.”_

“Sergio would never forgive me if I came all this way and didn’t at least kick your ass for this,” he said, grabbing her arm. His hand tried to sink through her, knowing even if he didn’t that she wasn’t a part of his world anymore, but he ignored it. Fuck the laws of the universe, he was on a mission. “Come up. Up we go now. If you die here, you’re taking with you the heart of your team. You’re killing something beyond yourself.”

_“Spencer,”_ she cried, and her voice was further away than she was. _“He won’t come.”_  She continued talking, but Rossi couldn’t hear her, as though she was speaking through a wall to someone in another room. If Reid replied, he also was beyond Rossi’s reach.

Panic reverberated down the ties holding them, wild and winter all at once. Rossi craned his neck back and (fucking hell, not now, why won’t you just _die_ ) above him his team were faint stars smeared by Foyet’s grubby touch. He hadn’t run at all. He’d attacked. He’d attacked and the only one not locked in spell casting was Aaron.

He was alone.

“We have to go, now!” Rossi roared, dragging her up. She fought him, and he could feel something pulling her down, Reid’s determination to die. Or rather, and Rossi could relate to this, his utter determination to be free.

_“He won’t!”_ she said desperately, and he could feel her _wanting_ to live just as much as she refused to let him not. _“Make him!”_

“That’s not our place,” Eris said, and there was a sadness in her tenor that made Rossi’s chest ache. “We have no right to force that upon him. Nor do you.”

He felt her say something. He felt her cry out with the pain of loss.

He felt her let go.

And, seconds later, he felt something darker and colder than death itself implode above, falling down upon them like an avalanche and obscuring their way home.

“Shit!” he gasped (is that Eris screaming?), before tumbling into nothing.


	18. Extinction

She fell for a lifetime and the only thing she knew was her arms around him, because he fell with her. They plunged into nothing and it wasn’t dark; it was beyond that. Emily felt the membranous pressure of the force she’d felt in his mind moments before they actually slammed into it and tumbled through, and now she knew what it was like to be dead.

It was nothing.

And everything.

And still, he was there.

And then they faded until

 

* * *

 

You don’t get to see your whole life as your die. Who would want that? You get a moment. Maybe a few flash by, but you only remember one.

A single moment of your choosing.

Treasure it.

 

* * *

 

_Stirring the pot, she peered into the deep red of the simmering sauce. A bubble formed, popped, splattered upwards._

_“Argh!” she exclaimed, waving the wooden spoon as she reeled out of splash distance. “Shit fuck shit shit!” Her nose stung._ _Arms around her waist, hands settling on her hips. If she leaned back, he enveloped her from behind, a comforting embrace. Positives of having a boyfriend taller than her, she guessed. Tucking his chin on her shoulder, he looked down at the evil sauce._

_“Did you know the largest tomato tree has over 32,000 tomatoes in a single harvest?” he murmured into her ear, his lips brushing her neck. Holy fuck, he was using his goddamn bedroom voice to tell her about tomatoes. He was turning her on by talking about_ **_vegetables._ **

_This kid was going to be the death of her._

_“No, I didn’t know that,” she said, turning in his grip so she was facing him. He beamed at her, ruffled from his nap on her couch and with the crease of his sleeve running up his face. She kissed him, once, twice, considering turning the sauce off and taking him back to that couch. He hummed into her mouth contentedly. “Why would I know that? No one knows that.”_

_“I know that,” he corrected, and licked her nose._

_She yelped, smacking him with the spoon gently and leaving a smear of tomato paste across his cheek. He laughed, shaking his head slightly. “Spencer!”_

_“You had sauce on your nose. It needs salt. Salt is actually one of the few resources—”_

_To shut him up, she kissed him again, and she could taste his smile under the tang of tomato._

 

* * *

 

She didn’t want to fade without him. Or with him. She didn’t want to fade _at all_. Where they went, they wouldn’t have each other, and she’d fought too hard for too long to give up on him now.

“Spencer!” she called, but he was a ghost and unlike her, he welcomed the emptiness. “Please!”

Before this, in the time she barely remembered because it had been dreamlike in its scarcity, he’d never denied her. She’d never begged him, never begged anyone, but if she had it would have horrified him. She begged now.

Please.

She felt him open his eyes. He didn’t speak; maybe he couldn’t; but she heard what he would have said.

I don’t want to die.

_Then don’t._

I don’t want you to die either.

He breathed. They probably didn’t need to, but his chest expanded against her, and his arm shifted, wrapped around her, tightened. Down here, it was bare, no gold to catch her skin. “I can’t feel him,” he said, and there was a boyish glee in his tone. “He’s gone, Em. I’m me. I’m dying as myself; isn’t that wonderful?”

No.

There was happiness around them, flavouring the dark. They would fade to whispers here, and he delighted in that. She wasn’t sure if that broke her heart or mended it. Was she so selfish she wouldn’t allow him this final pleasure?

“I fucking died for you,” she snapped, twisting to try and peer upwards, but she couldn’t see anything. She didn’t even know which way up was anymore. “And you’d leave me here.”

Arms tightened around her, and his eyes widened in panic. “I’m not leaving you,” he said, and she wanted to kiss him in that moment, but she thought maybe he wasn’t real anymore. Everything was unreal now. “I’ll stay with you until you’re ready.”

And then something slammed into them with all the force of Rossi’s ridiculous personality, and they screamed as Eris’s talons tore through them.

 

* * *

 

_“You don’t want to work for me?”_ _Her mother was doing that thing. That stupid thing with her eyes and her mouth where one looked sad and the other calculating. Emily once dated a guy who had pointed it out; he said she did the same thing._

_He’d called her a manipulative bitch and she’d slapped him._ _When she’d gone home crying, her mother had told her it wasn’t appropriate anyway._

_“I want to learn magic,” Emily said firmly, ignoring that expression, and thinking of the possibilities magic would open for her._

_“What? Why on earth would you do that? Only lazy people need magic to do things, Emily.”_

 

* * *

 

Dave was there, and he was burning with determination. She could feel it in him. He wasn’t leaving here without her.

“You’re risking your life for us!” she shrieked at him, trying to push him up and away without her arms because if she let go of Spencer, he’d creep away to spare her the pain. Didn’t Dave realize they were _dead?_ They were fucking dead and gone and there was no changing that. “Get out of here _—_ I used too much too fast, we’re dead, Dave.”

There was a breathtaking sadness in his eyes when he looked at her. _“Sergio would never forgive me if I came all this way and didn’t at least kick your ass for this,”_ he said quietly, and grabbed her arm. He was so _alive_ it burned. She wanted that. Wanted it like she had wanted air when she had lived.

“Go with him,” Spencer said, and the happiness was gone and in its place as a fading sensation, like he’d resigned himself to loneliness. In comparison to Rossi, he was an empty husk. She felt somewhere in between. “He can save you.”

Rossi yammered on, and he was trying to be stoic but he’d never been as good at that as Hotch, and his voice cracked with grief and fear under the bravado. _“Come up. Up we go now. If you die here, you’re taking with you the heart of your team. You’re killing something beyond yourself.”_ Her team. Selfishly, she thought maybe he didn’t care about the team so much as maybe he cared about his pride at having an ex-student die in such a preventable manner. A student mage’s mistake; never second circle. But, that was wrong. He loved her. It was easy to tell down here; anything more than nothing changed the world around them to taste of it, and right now all she could feel was his anxious love. So many flavours of love, she’d never imagined so many. The love of a teacher for a student; a father for a daughter; a friend; and one that was simply the love of one life for another.

“He can save you too,” she said to Spencer, but he just blinked owlishly at her and tried to tug away.

“I can’t. I can’t go back to Foyet. I’ve been Foyet for so long, only now can I remember what being Spencer Reid feels like. It’s amazing _—_ I can’t give this up, Emily. Not even for you. And you shouldn’t ever give up anything for me either.”

“I’ve already given you everything,” she replied, because he had her heart and now her life, and what more could he want? To Rossi, she pleaded, “He won’t come.” He could make him. Reid respected him, surely he’d listen to him!

Rossi wasn’t paying attention, and then there was panic. _“We have to go now!”_ Both of them pulling at her. Dave upwards, and Spencer trying to slip out of her grasp because she was anchoring him, and he couldn’t fade away while she kept reminding him of what being alive offered.

“I want to fucking live, you bastard,” she screamed at Reid, and he whirled on her. _He looks human down here,_ she thought, which was odd because until now he hadn’t looked like much at all. Until Rossi had grabbed her, she only had the idea of him. But she could see him clearly, and he wasn’t glamoured. He wasn’t hidden. He just was, and everything about him was human and mundane. Normal. “I’m stronger than you. I won’t let go.”

It was how he really was to himself.

Human.

“Emily,” he said seriously, “you know that’s not right. You don’t need to be strong to hang on, but you do to let go. You’re too strong to die like this. If you want to live, do it. Just. Let. Go.” She was fucking crying. She was crying and he wasn’t, and didn’t he feel anything? She probably shouted something because Rossi was all lines and sadness and stubbornness, and he sighed. She thought maybe she’d shouted at him to fix this, like he was capable of righting all her wrongs.

“That’s not our place,” Eris said, and Emily had almost forgotten she was there. She remembered Sergio with a shudder. “We have no right to force that upon him. Nor do you.”

Then she remembered everyone and almost cried out with the feeling of that. It hurt, to remember everything at once. She hadn’t even realized she’d forgotten. This place was made of forgetting.

“This is what you want?” she asked Reid quietly.

_“Yes,”_ he whispered from wherever he was going, already halfway there.

Okay.

She let go.

He leaned and brushed ghostly lips across her cheek, her mouth, inhaling the scent of her one last time. _“I remember loving you now,”_ he said, and smiled. _“Thank you.”_

He melted away like he’d never existed in the first place. And, just like that, the last incubus to still walk the earth was gone. Total extinction. How many other than her would mourn the loss?

But he was gone and, she was going to survive this.

Rossi pulled her towards something familiar (her… body. It existed. There was a place outside of this dream. Something else she’d forgotten), and then something slammed into them and they began to drown.

 

* * *

 

_“Miaow.”_ _She looked down and there was, of all things, a ridiculous black puffball with a rat-like tail and gangly paws that batted at her shoelaces. It looked up at her and mewled, its mouth a wide pink opening on a coal-black face. There was a cleverness in the creature’s green-gold eyes that stunned her._

_“Hello you,” she greeted it, crouching to pick the squirming kitten up. “Where on earth did you come from?”_ _It wriggled, purring so loud its body rumbled, and reached a clawed paw out towards the unlit cigarette dangling between her lips._

_“What on earth is that?” Matt asked, leaning over her shoulder. “It looks half drowned.”_

_“Maa-naow,” demanded the kitten. He was hungry._ _He was a he._

_How did she know that?_

_“I think he’s my cat,” she said, smiling despite her confusion._

_“You don’t have a cat.”_

_She did now._

_“Name it fleabag,” said one of the other student mages, taking a swig of her beer. “It’s probably infested. Aww, it’s all spiky furred—it matches your hair, Em.”_

_The cat growled, and it was a stupidly deep sound for such a tiny sneeze of a thing._

_“His name is Sergio,” she corrected the girl, standing and tucking the kitten into the front of her jacket. There was another thing she knew for no apparent reason. “Does anyone have anything he can eat?”_

_Matt searched his pockets. “I have… ah… tic tacs. And a muesli bar.” The group bickered._

_“Cats eat milk, you idiot.”_

_“You don’t eat milk, idiot. You drink it. And no, they don’t—it makes them sick. Like rats and cheese.”_

_“Bullshit. Rats fucking love cheese.”_

_Sergio sighed. “Buy me a burger,” he instructed, and she gasped at the feel of his voice. “There’s a good girl.”_

_That was the start of something._

 

* * *

 

Foyet was dead and he was taking them with them, dragging them down beyond the quiet non-existence Spencer had wanted, to somewhere that stunk of him and pain and sorrow. The only thing Emily could take solace in was that by letting go, she’d saved Spencer from this, because Foyet covered her, every part and piece of her, and Rossi raged with the horror of it. They knew now what Spencer had suffered, and she howled with sick clawing revulsion at the knowledge that if they couldn’t extract themselves, they’d be trapped like this forever.

He was smoke and every time she breathed he became more of her. He didn’t speak and somehow that made it worse, just hummed with the glee of devouring them.

“I’ll burn you,” snarled Dave, twisting in his grasp and reaching for Emily, trying to shelter her. She grabbed his hand, some small comfort for them both, and she couldn’t find Eris.

Dave squeezed his hand in her grip. He didn’t let go. He wouldn’t.

Oh.

He’d die here with her. She thought of the team standing above, waiting for them to wake up, and them never doing so. She thought of Dave taking his last breath. She thought of Hotch grieving his wife and then his best friend, and two of his team along with them. She thought of four funerals and their friends never recovering from this loss.

Just when they’d realized how much they wanted to live, they were having it taken away from them.

_“Sorry, Emily,”_ Dave called, and his voice was faint again, like a badly tuned radio. _“I’ll try—”_

Something hit them from below with enough force that they were wrenched out of Foyet’s grasp, corks from pressurised wine bottles, and flew upwards into

 

* * *

 

There was a moment when his strength faltered, and without thinking, she fed hers into his. _“Come on,”_ she goaded him. _“Just a little bit further. We’ve got this, just let me help you.”_ He slowed and strained against whatever dragged at him, so she twisted around him and gave him her love, her heart, anything he needed. Everything he already had. Just like Sergio had told her to. _Remind him who he is and he’ll stay._

_“Okay,”_ he whispered, and let her in. She found the parts of him that Foyet had left hollow, raw scarring running deep into his core, and tentatively brushed against them with her own touch.

Her hip burned, but in a good way, like the first touch of a spring sun after a long winter. Her arm hummed with it, the rune with his name in it singing. She thought of her rune, the one she’d slaved over. She could visualize it perfectly, and she did, pushing the memory of it at him. With an achingly familiar curiosity, he examined it, every line and whorl. He smiled. Then he took it from her, a gift freely given, and pulled it into himself.

They travelled the last distance together.

_“Always.”_

 

* * *

 

Ow.

Her chest burned. It burned.

Oh. Breathe. You have to breathe now.

She gasped and that hurt too. When she opened her eyes, oh god.

“Emily!” shrieked a voice that was all sharp edges and blue and ow. Ow ow ow ow.

“Fuck me,” Emily groaned, and someone laughed hysterically. The kind of laugh that followed nearly dying. “What the ow. Everything hurts, oh my god.”

“I’m going to…” someone said next to her, and she heard retching. When she turned her head, and wow, okay, so that was another thing that hurt to do, Rossi was buckled over and vomiting merrily. Her stomach lurched and she joined him. Apparently, being dead was absolutely crap-house for your digestion.

Suddenly, JJ cried out again, without words this time, and her knee smacked solidly into Emily’s thigh as the elf flung herself over the top of her. Emily cussed wildly, wiping her mouth and swallowing back the bitter bile and saliva that coated her mouth, her thigh throbbing. The woman had _bony_ knees, Christ's sake. Sobbing. JJ was… sobbing. She sat up gingerly and looked to see what…

Spencer was sitting up, _sitting up_ , alive. Eyes open. Well, openish. He looked completely fucking out of it, poleaxed, and his arms were wrapped around the bawling JJ, who was probably the most undone Emily had ever seen her. She was _hiccuping_ from crying so hard. Emily couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried like that.

That was a lie. She’d cried like that one night just after he’d vanished; on her bed with Sergio when it had hit her he wasn’t coming home. The kind of crying that you tried to hold back and it escaped as a keening moan before devolving into tears and snot and pain so harsh it tore on the way out.

He wasn’t crying.

He hadn’t vomited.

Unfair.

“Shh, hey,” he murmured, and her stomach kicked again but for a different reason. “Hey, Jayge. I’m here. It’s okay. We’re okay.”

“Emily,” said Hotch, right by her ear, and she jumped because her world had become solely the small section of it that contained Spencer alive and consoling and himself. Hotch was crouched next to her, blood on his hands, and he handed her her gun. It was warm. He’d fired it. “Thank you.” Beyond him, Foyet stared at them with a neat hole in his forehead that was more than he deserved.

It was almost anticlimactic.

She couldn’t turn back around in case she’d imagined it. “Is he actually okay, Hotch?” she asked, and Hotch’s eyes flickered to him and back, before reaching up and resting his fingers gently on her cheek. It was an oddly affectionate gesture, tempered by the fact he’d probably just gotten Foyet’s blood all over her face. Ew.

“I think so,” was all he’d say, but that was enough.

 

* * *

 

Things moved very quickly after that, but mostly because the human body had a delightful reaction to intense stress, and dying was probably as stressful as it came. Shock. Shock was _nice_ Emily was finding. Or she would have been finding, if it didn’t make everything hazy and cold and warm all at once.

She remembered crawling over to Spencer and hoping she hadn’t just put her knee in her vomit from earlier. She remembered not saying anything to him, just gingerly finding a part of him that wasn’t bleeding or bloodied and laying her head there. She remembered him leaning back against something, wrapping his arms around her _—_ his _bare_ arms, and she didn’t realize then what that meant, but she would after _—_ his eyes turned vacant and dull. Turned out demons went into shock too; who knew?

She vaguely remembered that the something he was leaning against was Morgan, and that was how the paramedics found them once they were finished with Jack and the now vigorously bleeding Hotch. Laying in a strange heap of limbs on the grass and dawn colouring the sky with purple streaks that made her feel chilly just to look at, and Morgan the only one of them who was still able to answer their questions. She remembered watching the streetlights flicker off.

Someone wrapped a blanket around them. She thought she saw Hotch hugging Rossi, but maybe she imagined that. JJ had one hand pressing her jacket against Spencer’s knee, and the other clutching Emily’s hand like she was trying to hold them both together. Someone definitely talked at her for a little, but she had no clue what they said, and eventually they must have given up because all she heard was the dull _tha-thump_ of Spencer’s heart by her ear.

Was it over? She didn’t dare to hope it was.

But it felt like it might be.

 

* * *

 

_“Come on, kopelia mou. Up now.”_

_There was blood on her knee, mixed with the gravel and dirt, and she might cry. “I fell off,” she explained, her face all hot and yuck, as she pointed to the bike. The wheel wobbled._

_Her ntantá clucked her tongue. “Nai'. What are you going to do about that?” she asked Emily, who shrugged and sniffed in a manner that would make her mother frown. “You just have to get right back up. No point sitting down there feeling sorry for yourself.”_

_“But it hurts.”_

_She took Emily’s hand. “Falling down usually does. But the hurt won’t stop until you make it stop. You have to show it that it can’t stop you from living.”_

_Emily got up._

 

* * *

 

On the 10th of February, 2007, he was taken from them. On the 29th of November, 2008, he was returned. Bruised, bleeding and more than a little broken, but alive. One year, seven months and nineteen days of captivity. Five hundred and ninety-seven days. Just over eighty-five weeks.

He was home.  



	19. Recovery

The next few days were a blur of faces and a white sky that Emily eventually understood to be the roof of the hospital room. As it turned out, dying was a lot easier than coming back to life was, and none of them had had an easy time of it.

There was always someone with her when she struggled to wake up from a consuming fog of bone-deep weariness that screamed at her; _you should be sleeping, sleep now, sleep forever, why are you even still alive?_ It was never who she wanted it to be, although she couldn’t quite remember _who_ she wanted.

One day it was JJ, and maybe hours later it still was, but she wasn’t sure. There was a tentative weight on her legs and when she blinked awake Will was holding a smiling Henry carefully on the bed so he couldn’t knock against her with a flailing limb.

“Little guy wanted to come see his Auntie Em,” Will said in his quiet southern lilt. There was a crease of a worried smile around his eyes. “How you feeling? JJ will be back soon if you can hang…”

His voice faded. “Hi, Henry,” Emily said sleepily, trying to lift her hand up so he could grasp at her finger. He liked holding things these days, especially delighting in hands that dwarfed his own. Her arm ignored her and stayed useless on the bedcovers, and she closed her eyes in irritation.

Purring. _“You are in an incredible amount of trouble when you return to the land of the useful,”_ said his voice sternly, but the purring continued, _“and I am still at Rossi’s because you haven’t dealt with the apartment, and Clooney likes to chase cats. This is so horribly selfish of you…”_

She snapped awake once because she had to, Hotch was talking, and she had to listen to him or he’d have her out on her ass. “… saved Jack’s life. I can’t ever repay you for that. But I will spend the rest of my life trying…”

She must have been mistaken though, because Hotch would never say that.

“... And the only balloons they had were SpongeBob so I bought those and it worked for you but you should have seen Rossi’s face, I can’t work out if he was horrified or delighted, and I went to see Reid and he just… oh, Emily, he just looked at me like he doesn’t know me anymore and I want to hug him but he’s so… much less than he was.” This voice trailed into tears and Emily could hear Morgan soothing, consoling, his own voice wavering. They clung to each other.

The next voice was loud and demanding and moving away from her bedside, protesting the whole way. “I am _fine._ I am perfectly capable of walking, I don’t need a damn wheelchair! I’m an FBI agent, second circle mage, and three times your age; stop babying me!”

Oh Rossi, you stubborn bastard. Never change.

And when she woke up completely, it was night, the room was comfortably dark except for the gleam of light from the hallway, and he was sitting next to her bed watching her.

“Spencer,” she said before choking on the block of sandpaper someone had substituted her tongue with while she was asleep. He silently handed her a cup of water, and she grabbed his wrist instead of the cup. He could have dodged the move, she was sluggish and uncoordinated with the dregs of her exhaustion, but he let her do it. Pushing his sleeves back, she ran her fingers over his arm, just to check, because everything in her was whirling with fear and excitement and a sickening giddiness and she needed to _know_.

Bare. Still bare. Bare, naked skin marred with scabbing and bruising but _free._

“It’s gone,” she said and, ridiculously, began to cry. She blamed how long she’d been sleeping. It would make anyone weepy. “You’re alive. You’re free.”

He nodded slowly and didn’t say anything, and they sat in silence with their fingers twined together until a nurse came and took him away.

 

* * *

 

She didn’t see him again for another two days, until she was trying to spoon green jello into Sergio’s protesting mouth and JJ wheeled him in. He looked wonderfully cranky and slightly overwhelmed at being in the wheelchair, and when he saw her he smiled uncertainly.

“Hi,” she said, lowering the spoon and letting Sergio escape. He vanished off the bed, and reappeared on Spencer’s lap, who lifted a nervous hand and laid it on his flank warily. “Nice wheels.”

“Rossi has some just like it,” JJ said, smiling. “Morgan and Will had a hearty discussion on, I believe the term was, ‘blinging’ them up. And having races.”

“How did that go?” Emily asked her, but her attention was on Spencer. His attention was all on the cat on his legs, looking down and avoiding eye contact. She still couldn’t believe he was here.

“Hotch nixed it. Jack looked like he was about to cry. Boy, do I look forward to Henry being that age. I’ll… leave you two alone, shall I?” Before Emily could answer, the elf was gone. Sergio vanished as well, without a word. Spencer picked green jello off the blanket on his lap, still looking down.

“So,” Emily said, eyeing him. “Gonna give me the laundry list of injuries? Because all everyone seems to want to ask me about is how I’m feeling, and none of them will tell me about you. And I think, after dying for you, I deserve to know.”

His throat worked as he swallowed before speaking. Heart hammering at the sound of his voice, she noted how painfully husky it was. The list seemed to go on forever, especially delivered in the dull monotone that was all he seemed to be able to manage. Anaerobic infection in the patagium of his wing, caused by ballistic trauma that extended across his shoulder. Two to four weeks to clear the necrotic tissue. Another eight for three stages of reconstructive surgery to mend where the delicate tissue had been eaten away by the abscesses. Twelve weeks after that of physical therapy before he could fly on it again. Full recovery likely after seven months. Mild bacterial pneumonia. He was already recovering from that, but the aftereffects could linger for up to a month. Magic fatigue. It could be two weeks before he gained any of his power back. She didn’t comment on that; they’d told her the same about hers and she didn’t want to dwell on the empty feeling at her core. Every time she reached for it, she remembered being dead.

And then, he faltered. He looked down again and he hadn’t been looking at his lap at all, but the bulky shape of his leg sticking stiffly out in front of him.

“How long till that’s useable?” she asked, probably callously, but honestly, hadn’t life piled enough shit on them yet? She had thought his voice was monotonous before, but now it turned positively savage with apathy, as though he could ignore the truth of what he was saying by just not caring.

“No idea,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “Risk of sepsis is too high with… everything else. They… there’s nothing left of it to rebuild. Just fragments and…” his voice wavered. “You know, birds can fly without the use of their legs. Their bodies are so perfectly designed for the air, legs are practically an afterthought. Humanoids? Actually, not so much. Severe infection; almost certain. Likelihood of amputation is high. Even if they don’t amputate, my leg will be more prosthetic than bone once they rebuild it. With luck, I may recover satisfactory function despite restricted flexing. _Satisfactory_.”

“Spencer,” she whispered, trying to cut him off because his breath was hitching and his fingers were digging cruelly into the blanket. Hazel eyes flicked up and caught hers, wild with horror.

“It’s was one thing to suspect my career was over,” he said bitterly. “But having it confirmed is… unpleasant. I’ll never be a field agent again, Emily. Not with one leg.”

She couldn’t reach him physically, and, in that moment, she saw something in his eyes that suggested there was a wider gulf between them than she knew how to breach.

 

* * *

 

Her hip itched like there were bugs under the skin, and she found that in her sleep she was scratching it bloody. She scrubbed at the raw skin in the shower, twisting her body this way and that to try and examine the reddened patch under the shifting light of the hospital bathroom. The soap stung on the scratches, and she savagely scrubbed harder, the itch returning as soon as she lifted the sponge away.

When she squinted, something flickered on her skin, but she couldn’t tell what and the nurses said there was nothing there.

Maybe she was going mad.

 

* * *

 

They let Rossi home first and she raged about that. She got out two days later, JJ drove her back to his house, and neither of them spoke about Hotch and Spencer still at the hospital.

A week later, Hotch was released. By this point, both she and Rossi were done hobbling around like old women and there was a spring back in Sergio’s stride. They were recovering. She visited Spencer every day, but he said little at first and even less as time went on. The doctors stopped talking about physical recovery and began to talk about mental, their expressions turning grim. The news stopped reporting on the ‘ _Miraculous recovery of missing Agent; Reign of terror over after thrall-bound freed!’_ and began reporting on protests about demon rights. Occasionally they brought Spencer up, but he wasn’t the focus anymore. Between JJ and Hotch, they kept the reporters away.

Spencer’s room filled with flowers and cards and well wishes. So did Emily’s. Most were anonymous. One loud spray of brilliant orange wildflowers came with a note that simply said ‘ _You’ve brought change. Thank you.’_ Spencer stared at it for hours like he didn’t quite understand, and when his gaze switched to her, it was thoughtful.

She received a thick package from the Georgetown Mage’s College. Her rune was being torn apart and examined by a laundry list of scholars’ names, only a few of whom she was familiar with. Rossi’s signature was on half of them. They wanted her to speak, when she was ‘up to it.’ She thought of the emptiness in Spencer’s eyes and thought they were hopelessly optimistic. She wasn’t entirely sure that she had actually saved him. It was becoming increasingly likely that all she’d brought back was his ghost.

Emily got her apartment fixed up. She and Sergio moved back in on a Wednesday.

On Thursday, Spencer was placed into seventy-two-hour suicide hold and they weren’t allowed access to him.

 

* * *

 

Rossi drove and Emily sat in the back and stared at the back of Spencer’s head like she could bore a hole through the neat brown waves of his hair. He was hunched over, his shoulders curled into himself, one wing higher than the other where the bandage pulled it against his back. He was practically in the backseat anyway, they’d shoved his chair back as far as possible so his leg could lay flat, the bulky metal brace around it making it impossible to bend.

The music blared as Rossi fiddled with it. Then quietened. Then blared again. He swore. Spencer’s eyes shifted to his fingers and narrowed. He hadn’t said a word since they’d released him under strict supervision.

Emily had instantly said she’d do it, but Rossi had outranked her. When she’d looked at Spencer to defend her, he’d said nothing, just stared blankly at the wall and fiddled with the plastic bracelet around his thin wrist. So, they were going for a sleepover at Rossi’s again, just when she’d gotten the smell of his cologne out of her nose. Sergio had refused, since Morgan was still there and he and Clooney hadn’t quite come to an agreement on where Clooney could put his nose yet.

“Any requests?” Rossi asked Spencer politely, but his gaze just shifted away and out the window again, turning distant. They heard him sigh. She gathered her magic, ignoring the way it protested her touch, and reached for his mind, but he shut her out smoothly and it was like he wasn’t even there.

How could they help him if he wouldn’t let them in?

 

* * *

 

He snuck out of her sight once when she was home alone, and she almost vomited with the panic of not being able to find him. She found him sitting on the floor of Rossi’s stupidly huge pantry, and there were the tracks of tears on his face.

“Is it your leg?” she asked, inwardly freaking out, squatting next to him and trying to unobtrusively examine his arms, his belly, his mouth. Any sign that he’d tried to foil their efforts to keep him alive. He hadn’t spoken about the suicide watch, none of them had, but it lingered over them like a noxious smoke that none of them could clear from their memory. “Did you fall?”

“I was hungry,” he said finally. “I was hungry and I came to get something to eat but there’s so much, there’s too much, I don’t… I can’t decide. Oh god, Emily, I don’t know, why is there so much?” He looked down so she couldn’t see how scared he was. So, she couldn’t judge him for the fear in his hazel eyes.

She wouldn’t have anyway.

“Ice cream,” she announced instead, standing. Both her knees popped as she stood, and he blinked. “Ice cream and something disgusting and sugary on top.”

She made two revolting concoctions of maple syrup and pecan ice cream, and they ate them on the floor of the pantry like it was normal. Rossi walked in halfway through, took one look at them, and his face softened. He didn’t say anything. But, from then on, before they made any meals, he very quietly asked Spencer what he wanted.

Sometimes, Spencer even answered him.

 

* * *

 

“Stop following me!” he’d snapped once, whirling on her when he’d gotten up to hobble to the toilet on his crutches and she’d immediately stood to assist him. “I’m not going to fling myself off the roof as soon as I’m out of your sight!”

Morgan lowered his book. “We don’t give a shit what you think you’re gonna do, Pretty Boy,” he said calmly. “She follows you or I do. And I can assure you, she’s _way_ more forgiving than I am.”

“There’s a third option,” Rossi offered, sticking his head through the doorway of the living room and beaming at them. “I’m way more handsy though. I’d go with Prentiss. At least she’s pretty.”

He barely dodged the cushion she belted in his direction, and Spencer’s mouth didn’t even twitch.

Once, he would have laughed.

 

* * *

 

He didn’t wake up screaming, but he’d shudder awake every night multiple times and she could feel his heart hammering through the bed. Sometimes, the shuddering didn’t stop and she thought he might be crying. Sometimes, he gasped out loud and his back arched with his fingers clutching the sheets, and these nights she got up and found the painkillers labelled _extreme pain only_ and quietly handed them to him, waiting until they kicked in and his eyes turned vacant before returning to bed herself.

She hated those nights. He was grossly still on the nights they doped him into oblivion, and she sensed that those nights were his favourites. It was a haunting reminder of the drugs and the scabbed over track-marks on his arm and how close he still teetered to addiction.

She almost preferred the nights when he cried.

On the nights he cried, she never told him that she’d heard him because he had very little privacy remaining to himself these days, and she sensed that he needed this to be his alone.

But she was there if he needed her.

 

* * *

 

The first night he’d been home she’d slept on the floor because, even though she desperately wanted to wake up next to him again, she was terrified that she’d knock his leg in the night. There was a tentative reconstruction of muscle and bone going on down there, assisted by a complex series of runes she’d studied and been completely outclassed by, and they were all horribly aware how easy it would be for the spells pinning it together to unravel. And if it did fail, even just once, they weren’t going to try again.

She hadn’t slept a wink because it was exhilarating still just hearing him breathe, and because both Rossi and Morgan kept ‘wandering’ past the slightly open doorway and poking their heads in. She was beginning to feel like she was being watched as well.

At some godawful early hour of the morning, she started out of a half-sleep to hear a grating whisper. “Emily?”

“What’s up?” she asked, sitting upright and peering at him through the gloom. Light caught his open eyes, his face a mask of shadows. “Need a drink?” Silence. She wondered if he’d fallen asleep.

“Can you…” he trailed off and inhaled noisily. Finally, his voice a whisper, “I miss you.” She crawled up onto the bed with him and with her legs hanging off the edge, rested her head on his chest. Carding his fingers gently through her hair, she felt some of the tension leave his body. She woke up stiff as a board with a crick in her neck, and he slept peacefully.

She thought it might have been the first time he had since they’d lost him.

 

* * *

 

“You need to use your magic again or it will stagnate,” Rossi informed them one day. “Practise. Outside, please. I like the décor in here.”

Spencer slouched on Rossi’s outdoor setting, with no intention of casting anything, and Emily traced patterns in the damp soil with the toe of her shoe and thought about it. When she reached tentatively for her magic, she found it obstinate and slow, and she gave up quickly. It felt unfamiliar to her questing mind. Angry, sullen, twisted. It wasn’t the easy slide of her raw strength, or the wild tang of Sergio’s touch, and she didn’t know what to do with it.

Beyond it, she knew there was a black nothing, and a quiet part of her yearned for it. She recoiled from that yearning. She wondered if Spencer felt it too.

Rossi eventually let them back in, but he looked disappointed.

 

* * *

 

Spencer found his stuff in Rossi’s basement and spent a week down there, from the moment he woke up to the moment the painkillers kicked in and sent him back to his restless sleep. Sometimes, Emily sat down with him, but they weren’t watching him as closely now, and she sensed he was trying to find who he was before her.

And, until he did, she thought maybe he wasn’t ready to be who he had been with her.

 

* * *

 

Rossi made her leave the house every couple of days. He wouldn’t do the same to Spencer, but he said she needed a break or she’d go mad. Her hip still itched constantly and she thought that maybe she already was. She never admitted to him that she spent the whole time pacing in the park up the road waiting for the moment she could be back by his side, because that level of co-dependence wasn’t exactly reassuring, but she suspected he knew.

One day, she got back and JJ’s car was parked out the front. When she walked inside, Spencer was on the floor with his leg out in front of him, and he was showing Henry how to fit coloured blocks into a box with various shaped holes. Henry watched seriously as a blue rectangle slipped neatly through, before cackling loudly and clapping.

Spencer smiled, just for an instant.

JJ met Emily’s eyes over the top of their boys’ heads, and her eyes were bright with tears. Emily had a horrible feeling her own were too.

“He’s home,” Emily murmured under her breath, too low for anyone else to hear her.

JJ nodded.

 

* * *

 

She woke up one morning to Spencer cautiously standing on his good leg, teetering unsteadily with nothing but his one-legged pyjama pants on. She’d bought him a bunch of new pyjamas out of both a desire to not have to mutilate his old ones by hacking the leg off to fit over his brace, and out of the necessity of his drastic weight loss. His old clothes hung off him like rags on a scarecrow now.

“What are you doing?” she asked, jolting awake and shuffling closer in case he fell. He was a week away from his third bout of surgery on the knee, and they did not need him tearing something now. Not when they were so close.

“Testing,” he murmured, and arched his good wing out, snapping it out wide. She stared. It caught the light of the lamp and cast a translucent red glow on the walls. Then he undid the bandaging on the other and extended it slowly. His eyes were closed. He was shaking; she could see the wing joint tremoring with the effort of holding the weakened limb outwards after it had been supported for so long. “Em?” he asked, and his voice shrilled slightly.

She stood and reached, hesitating before laying her hands on the skin. They hadn’t touched since he’d come home, some six weeks earlier. Well, they had. She’d had to help him bathe, among other things, and he’d hated every minute of it and had withdrawn from her for hours after every time. She was used to that by now; she just waited him out until the steady _cli-click thump cli-click thump_ of his crutches announced his return to ‘not-sulking Spencer’. But hugging, caressing, everything that was soft and tender between them; nothing since the night he’d fallen asleep playing with her hair. If she tried, he went stiff and awkward and pulled away.

But she had permission now.

His skin was warm under her touch and his wing jerked and twitched, trying to skitter away from her. The other one mantled, an automatic reaction to his discomfort, and the one under her hand shivered like he was barely restraining it. She was gentle. The scarring was cruel. She could see where the bullet had ripped through, where they’d literally glued the membranous skin back together and hoped for the best. She could also see where they’d had to transplant skin on to replace what had rotted away faster than they could save it. It was a patchwork wing now. But, it was whole, even if it wasn’t pretty. He’d fly again, although never with any grace.

“Beautiful,” she said quietly, and leaned toward to brush her lips against the surface of his wing. When she stepped back, he folded it. It drooped from his back, much lower than the other, the muscles wasted. When she spoke again, she was looking at his face. “Still perfect, Spence.”

He blinked slowly, his leg wobbling under him, and she extended her arm so he could lean on it. “You’re a terrible liar,” he said, his mouth quirking crookedly. “I’ve seen wing reconstructions. The scarring never fades.”

“Perfection is subjective,” she countered, and led him to the bed.

When she woke in the morning, his hand was on her belly, and his touch burned her skin with longing.

 

* * *

 

They ventured outside the day after the first snow; Morgan as a shaggy dog who gambolled in the light snowdrifts, and Spencer bundled up so heavily he looked like he’d gained twice his own weight. She walked out wearing a dark coat and a red scarf, and he’d turned to look at her and went sickly white under the purple bobbly hat Garcia had brought him.

They got him inside before the panic attack really set in, but, as she quietly reminded him to breathe, he was shattering, his eyes dancing around anywhere but her, panting with fear. There was blood on his mouth where he’d bitten through his lip, and his fingers clenched and cut into the palms of his hands. When he could finally talk, all he’d say was he’d been reminded of the memory of a wound.

That night, she dreamed of Grace Harcourt and the way her throat had gaped open. She never wore the red scarf again because she couldn’t stomach the idea of it.

 

* * *

 

She startled him once. He was leaning on the back porch and looking out over a snow-covered backyard, and she didn’t think to make noise as she walked up behind him. He whirled, almost falling, and his face twisted into a snarl. She smelled a storm.

It was the first time she’d seen that Foyet still lingered in him, and it terrified her.

It was gone as soon as it had appeared, but neither of them forgot it.

 

* * *

 

“Right, get the fuck out of my house,” Rossi announced one day, throwing a bag at her. “I’ve got Morgan out, I want my home back. I’m feeling stifled.”

She complained as she packed, but, inwardly, she was delighted.

 

* * *

 

She emptied half her closet for him, and he stared at her while she did so.

“I don’t have to stay,” he babbled as she began unpacking his clothes and hanging them, his face reddening as though embarrassed. “I can find a new place, my old one maybe, the landlady loves me, I’ve already caused an imposition and it’s not…”

“Spencer,” she said finally, because he hadn’t stopped rambling since she’d hung his first jacket. “Seriously. I’m not letting you live on your own. You can’t even put your own pants on for fuck’s sake.”

His mood shifted rapidly, the shuffling embarrassment vanishing and replaced with a simmering anger that they were all uncomfortably familiar with. Foyet’s lasting gift to them; he’d taught Reid how to hate for no good reason. “I’m not a child,” he snapped, and clattered out, his crutches knocking her bedside cupboard as he went and sending her lamp toppling onto the pillow. “You can’t absolve your guilt by cosseting me.”

Later, he’d be sorry he snapped, but that wouldn’t take the sting of his words back.

 

* * *

 

TV was out; they’d found that out the first week when they’d been quietly watching a documentary on penguins and a sudden news flash had brought up the protests, demon rights activists, a picture of Grace Harcourt next to Spencer’s FBI photo. An image of her sobbing mother. Spencer had gotten up and limped out and when she’d knocked on the bathroom door to see if he was okay, she’d heard whimpers.

Between her, JJ, and Hotch, they managed to keep an interesting range of books in the house. It was easier than it would have been two years ago. Nowadays, his eyes lingered on the words like he was savouring them, turning the pages only slightly faster than they would have. It was as though reading was the one thing he could still enjoy. Or maybe he’d forgotten how fast he used to be.

 

* * *

 

Hotch arrived randomly one day and left with Spencer, a bag of his clothes, and instructions for her not to contact them. They were gone eight days and Emily almost went mad, pacing around the apartment until even Sergio told her to cut it out. To settle her nerves, she sat cross-legged on the floor and focused on her magic, deciding to try and get it under control. It fought her every step of the way, but finally she managed to call up a weak blaze of light in a rune on the paper in front of her. It went out as soon as she looked away, and the room stunk of something sharp and strange.

_“How odd,”_ Sergio commented, tilting his head and examining the curled paper. His voice was a faint drone now, faded away, and she knew it wouldn’t be long before the last of his magic took that from her. He would still be him, but the idea of having language locked away from him terrified her. He seemed oddly calm about it. _“If I didn’t know better…”_ He trailed off and wandering away, yowling angrily when he found his bedroom door shut now that he didn’t have the magic to open it himself. Her hip itched angrily and she spent the rest of the day alternating between picking at it and rubbing it with the palm of her hand to stop from scratching.

They returned and Spencer looked… better. She couldn’t say how, but there was a light to his eyes that hadn’t been there before.

“Where did you go?” she asked him curiously, but he just smiled tightly and shrugged.

“Paying our respects,” he said finally, and hugged her. It was fleeting and over in an instant, but the memory of his touch lingered for the rest of the day.

 

* * *

 

She went back to work. He didn’t. His leg was healing better than expected, but none of them were kidding themselves. It would be a long time, if ever, that Spencer Reid walked the halls of the FBI again.

She wasn’t sure what he did to keep himself busy besides obsessively clean the apartment, but when she got home he had her rune designs scattered all over the carpet and was hobbling back and forth, examining them and frowning.

She left him to it. At least it was some kind of hobby.

 

* * *

 

One day, she woke up and Sergio was sitting on her chest and his eyes were sad.

“Morning, cat,” she greeted him with a yawn, tickling his chin. Spencer turned his head, blinking himself awake, watching her pet her ex-familiar.

“Mrrow,” said Sergio.

She swallowed hard but even that didn’t hide how much it hurt.

 

* * *

 

Life settled into a broken kind of normality. Work, home, hospital. He shifted from crutches to a cane. He lost the brace. He refused to let her see what it looked like under the bandage. He limped, horribly. He wasn’t ready to lose the cane, she could tell by the pain in his eyes and the slick sheen of sweat that shone on his forehead as he forced himself in endless circles of the apartment. If she tried to point that out, he snarled at her like a cornered dog, and Sergio spat at him in return. He reconnected with the others. He had dinner at JJ’s. He struck up a surprising, if tentative, friendship with Will. He _adored_ Henry, and the only time Emily ever saw him truly open up was when the baby elf smiled up at him as though he could do absolutely no wrong. As far as Henry was concerned, he couldn’t. Emily hoped he never found out otherwise. She’d shift mountains to make sure he never found out about the past two years.

At least then something in Spencer’s life could remain pure.

He even went out for drinks with Morgan. Well, Morgan drank, Reid had soda and antibiotics and made complicated origami out of napkins while Morgan tried to pick up. They changed bars every two weeks because someone would inevitably recognise Reid’s face from the TV, and people would avoid their table like he was deadly. He didn’t seem to care; Morgan seemed to care too much.

At home, he was polite. She was soft. They slept in the same bed, but only touched if it was accidental or necessary. They certainly didn’t kiss. She missed being touched. She wondered if he remembered telling her he loved her in the void. She didn’t ask him.

When she got home, Sergio would run up and twine around her legs, and only the slightest spark of intelligence in his green-eyes hinted to the depths that were hidden in his diminutive form. She missed him so much it was a physical ache. There was always a price. Hers was loneliness.

And she was drowning in it.


	20. Endling

Rossi was jiggling like Reid on a caffeine high, making the stiff plastic chairs they were sitting in bounce with him, and JJ was sniggering. It was ridiculous.

“Rossi,” Emily said under her breath, “seriously, stop it. We’re having our physicals, not a goddamn tooth extraction.”

“I can’t help it,” he responded shortly. “The woman they have for the dark affined. Yeesh. You’d be nervous too if you had her in your head.” He pulled an afflicted face and Garcia made a soft noise of sympathy. JJ just laughed louder.

Emily was surrounded by children. “I miss Reid,” she muttered, slouching in her chair. Garcia’s sympathy switched to her in seconds, an unintended side-effect of her grouchiness.

Whatever the tech nymph was going to say was cut off by a stern looking woman with her steel-grey hair pulled back into a tight bun and impaled by a large hair pin. Rune in a cyanic blue cut harshly across her neck, ending at her chin, nothing like the sweeping swirls and loops of Emily’s work. “Magus Rossi?” she barked. “You’re up, bucko.”

Rossi stood, bowing slightly to her. “Magus Reinard,” he said, smiling smoothly and taking her hand. JJ’s mouth dropped open. “You’re a picture of loveliness, as always. I do so enjoy having you in my… head.”

The magi giggled, her cheeks pinking.

_She giggled._

“Holy shit,” Emily said softly, her mouth dropping open. The two older mages vanished, leaving the three women in shocked silence.

“Do you think they’re…?” Garcia asked finally, her eyes huge behind her thick glasses.

“Oh god, no, ew, please,” JJ yelped at the same time Emily dissolved into helpless laughter, covering her eyes with her hands. “Imagine the _children_.”

“I can’t _not_ imagine them now,” Garcia said glumly, staring at the door like all the mysteries of the universe lay hidden within.

 

* * *

 

“Magus Prentiss?” The mage working on her lowered his clipboard, smiling politely at her. “You’re almost done. Everything seems in perfect working order, with some disturbances caused by your… misadventures. But they’ll right themselves soon enough once you begin casting regularly. The mind is fantastic at healing.”

“Oh good,” Emily said, sliding off the bed. Her brain tingled slightly from the mage’s touch, and she was craving a strong black coffee to knock that itch away. JJ was shrugging her coat back on, thanking her mage with a bright smile. At the thought of itching, her hip started up again.

“Ah, one thing,” he said, holding up his clipboard apologetically. “I need you to fill out a form on your new familiar after the dissolution of your bond with the _felis_ Sergio. We’re also going to need to see the new familiar. Until then, I’m afraid I can’t sign you off on field duty. An enemy mage could access you through an unsecured familiar. You understand, of course.”

Emily stopped and stared. JJ turned, catching her gaze frowning. _What?_ her expression seemed to say. Emily shrugged. “I don’t have a familiar,” Emily said slowly, her heart twisting at the reminder.

The mage blinked. For a second, his confused look was so much like Reid’s that she expected him to flick a lock of hair out of his face, grin nervously, and ramble off on a complicated tangent. Instead, he just tapped on the clipboard. “My readings say you do,” he said, his brow furrowing. “It’s a little bit murky, what with the disturbances from your, ah, illness, but there’s definitely familial magic tied up with yours.”

“Sergio?” Rossi said sharply, coming up behind them. Emily hadn’t even heard him leaving the shielded room. “The cat? Is it traces of her previous familiar?”

A firm head shake. “Certainly not. Cats have a very unique mental flavour to them. This one is stronger. Are you sure you’re unaware?” He looked at her, concern lining his face. “This warrants further investigation, I hope you know. We’ll have to pull you from active duty until we reach the bottom of it.”

Someone grabbed her arm and dragged her towards the exit. She yelped, allowing Rossi his determined pace under protest. When his eyebrows were that particular shade of ‘stubborn’, she wasn’t going to stop him. “Unnecessary,” he called back. “We’ll have it sorted by tonight. You’ll see the familiar tomorrow.”

JJ shut the door behind them before the mage could respond, Garcia shimmering through just in time. Emily felt herself being wrenched around, Rossi’s hands on her shoulders and his face coldly serious. “Rossi, stop,” she protested. “I have no idea what’s going on, okay!”

“How exactly did you get us out of the dark?” he asked carefully. JJ went pale, probably imagining all sorts of things lurking down there that might have unknowingly returned with them. “I don’t remember a thing. Not a thing. Do you?”

“Reid got us out,” she stammered, a wary thought in the back of her mind suddenly rearing its head. “He… he got us out, we linked our magic, and oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit no, that’s not… We both have to _agree_.”

“Well,” Rossi said, his mouth twisting. “It’s not like either of you have followed rules before. You might want to go tell him the good news. I’m sure he’s going to be overjoyed to be bound again.”

She got to the trashcan before she threw up, but it was a close thing.

 

* * *

 

He was sitting at her kitchen table surrounded by books and rough sketches, Sergio batting at his socked toes that he seemed to be wiggling for the cat’s enjoyment. His other leg was propped on another chair, his pyjama pants straining against the thick bandaging. There was the suggestion of a smile on his lips and, despite the dark shadows under his eyes, he looked okay. Almost happy. Almost like things could be good again.

And she was about to ruin that.

His eyes flickered up, narrowing nervously when he saw her in the doorway. “You’re home early,” he said, tapping his pen against his mouth thoughtfully. “What’s wrong?” There was no hiding her betrayal. She should have realized what she’d done sooner. She should have undone it. He was standing, limping towards her, leaning heavily on the table. His cane hung forgotten off the end of the chair. “Em? Hey?”

“I bound you,” she said finally, the words falling from her mouth like poison and colouring everything with the horror of them. “When you were saving us. We’re bound. I think you’re my familiar.”

He stopped and looked stunned. Then his eyes turned distant, as though he was focusing on something far away. “Huh,” he said after a long moment. “Well, that explains a lot. I was wondering why my magic tasted so… well, like you, I guess. It seems obvious now.” She stared at him, her heart still hammering and nausea raging in her gut. He seemed… fine. “Are you okay?”

“I think I’m going to be sick again,” she mumbled, and staggered over to the couch, tucking her legs between her knees and focusing on just… breathing.

It was fine. This was fine.

 

* * *

 

A cool hand ran across her cheek, lifting her chin up. The couch dipped as he sat down heavily next to her, her hip sliding to lie parallel to his, the smooth wooden cane he hated resting against his leg. She let him pull her eye line up to his, their faces inches apart as he studied her carefully.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally, swallowing back guilt and misery and a thousand other conflicting emotions. “I… I think some part of me knew. And I didn’t do anything about it.”

He shrugged, the movement brushing their shoulders together. This was the closest they’d been in months, and it was because of her betrayal. “It’s no big deal. Familial bonds are simple to undo, if it comes to that.”

_If it comes to that._

“Spence…” she whispered, her heart doing a strange swooping thing in her chest that was dizzying and almost hopeful. She realized that, until this point, she’d almost been grieving something she hadn’t even known she had.

Those precious inches between them closed, and his lips met hers. The kiss was soft and familiar, flavoured terribly with sadness, and there was a resignation on both sides. “I think it could be interesting,” he said into her mouth, pausing between tasting her lips. “You need a familiar. And it will give us an excuse to see each other.”

And there it was.

Her heart dropped like a stone into her stomach and lay there heavily, trying to drag her into the couch and away from this moment. _Don’t_ , she said, or maybe thought, because there was a vicious inevitability about what he was going to say. She hadn’t said it. What she had said was, “I love you.”

“I know,” he replied, kissing her again. _Don’t_ , her brain chanted, feeling him pull away slightly, his hand fumbling with her shirt, her belt. She hissed as his fingers unzipped her pants, drawing them down, slipping along the elastic of her underwear. The panic twisted, mixing with hot desire that reminded her keenly just how long it had been since he’d touched her like this, but she knew he wasn’t thinking of sex. Well. She hadn’t thought he was, but his fingers stuttered on her skin and when she looked into his eyes they had turned dark and hungry, his breathing rapid.

“You’re seriously not going to try and seduce me while breaking up with me, are you?” she asked incredulously, trying not to lean into his warm touch.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” he replied, splaying his hand across her hip, narrowing his eyes at the scratches there. The itching stopped instantly, and she wriggled her pants down slightly so he could reach the skin easier. “And I’m not breaking up with you. You’re the one who’s been thinking about it for a month now. If anything, it’s a mutual dissolution of… us.”

She winced. “No, I haven’t,” she said quietly, but that wasn’t entirely true. “What are you doing?”

“Can’t you feel it?” he murmured, leaning over awkwardly with his leg thumping against the couch. She could feel his hand, his fingers, and… oh. That. She reached for him cautiously, her magic for once reacting eagerly, like a horse that had been waiting impatiently for a gate to be opened. Reaching, reaching, and their magic brushed together with a rush.

He let her in.

_“This,”_ he sent, bringing with him a flood of _himness_ that burned in her heart and her belly, pooling as a liquid lightning jolt of heat between her legs. Their magic sparked together, and the rune she hadn’t even been aware of at her hip flashed to life, twining around her skin and reacting gleefully to the touch of his fingers.

It was a double of the one on his own hip.

_“Two halves make a whole,”_ she commented quietly, probably melodramatically, and she wasn’t given to wild declarations like that but she could feel his happiness bubbling over, even if it was tainted with the horrible free-fall misery of him walking away. _“We don’t have to end.”_

He kissed her again. _“No, we don’t,”_ he agreed, _“but you look at me and see a victim now, and I need to prove to myself that I’m not before I can convince you otherwise. No more destroying yourself with guilt. No more treating me like glass. It’s not really an end. More of an interlude.”_

He’d taken his hand away from her hip at some point, the rune remaining even without his touch. She could see her name and his woven through it, the runes that made up the essences of themselves, and twined so closely together she could barely tell where one ended and the other began. Somehow, the effect wasn’t pleasant. It was as though they were obscuring each other, knotting together too tightly for either to breathe. They needed to be themselves before they could be together. She knew that.

It was a part of healing, learning when to hold on and when to let go.

Hands fumbled at her waist again and she shifted, sliding a leg over him so she was awkwardly straddling his slim hips, his own belt giving way under her hands. He lifted his ass slightly so she could tug his pants down, his underwear, until he was exposed and hard against her thigh. Their mouths caught, his lower lip catching on her teeth, moaning slightly into her open mouth.

_“All we’ve had are interludes,”_ she said between pressing her lips to his mouth, his neck, his chest. He tasted of sweat, of cologne, of himself. This was the first time they’d been together like this since the night she’d allowed him to compel her, a lifetime ago, and it was the last time as well. _“I’m sick of waiting for the interludes to be over.”_

He chuckled, the sound reverberating deeply in his chest under her hands. When she brushed her mind against his again, this time paying sharp attention, she could sense the thick scarring that bound his every thought, the constant reminders of the nightmare he’d lived and was still struggling to escape. _“Well, it’s not like we haven’t waited before,”_ he sent, slipping her pants down her hips and sliding two fingers along the edge of her underwear, along her and then _in her_ and she arched, rocking against them. _“If I have to spend another three months on your fire escape once we’re ready, I’ll do it. At least you have a new one now. We’ll wait in comfort.”_ His mind’s voice was ragged, and she burned with the echoes of his desire to be inside her, claiming her, tasting her. He wanted and she wanted, and there was no telling who wanted more.

Curling those long fingers, moving, working and she was being taken apart with every shift of his wrist, shuddering with anticipation against him. Mouthing at his neck, teeth catching his skin slightly; he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close enough that she could feel his heart beating firmly as her muscles tensed and knotted.

_“Idiot,”_ she sent, her mind’s voice stuttering. _“You know, the apartment next door is empty if you’re determined to do this. Colin would sell it to you.”_

His fingers slipped out and he was tugging her underwear aside, not even bothering to remove them. She waited until he was panting slightly with the exertion of not giving into the desire to rock against her, his leg a constant irritation that kept him from giving in to that need, before sinking down and taking him completely; not stopping until their hips were grinding together and she was shaking with the fullness of him. _Fuckfuck, don’t move, not yet,_ she hissed to herself, and he heard her, his eyes widening and turning hungry.

_“I… I can’t afford to buy an apartment here,”_ he gasped, his mouth slack. _“Maybe a box out the front. Sergio might lend me one. Emily, christ, move. Please. I… please.”_

Lifting her hips very slightly, then pressing down again _hard._ He almost mewled, his thoughts dissolving under her, and she felt his climax building in his mind. It was a bizarre feedback loop, especially when she clenched her legs together and he choked back a groan.

_“You know there’s an entire section of the budget set aside for you, right?”_ she sent, digging her fingers into his shoulders. This was a ridiculous conversation to be having while his cock was buried in her and she knew from the twitching of his hips that any minute now he was going to be beyond being sensible. _“You lost everything doing your job. You can have your pick of apartments and the Bureau will fund it. You could buy seven apartments with the money they’ve already put aside for your medical bills.”_

He jolted under her hands and she felt him shudder. _“I’m…”_ he whimpered, trailing off, his eyes hooded and he looked fucked, completely and utterly. She watched him as he stilled, feeling him twitch and pulse inside her, hot and sticky and this was going to be a mess, they were making messes of each other. _“Emily...”_

_“It’s alright,”_ she teased gently, leaning down and rocking her hips, moving along him, pressing her lips to his again so his hissed moan tumbled into her mouth. She danced on the edge of her own climax, held back by the awareness that maybe something was ending here.

Or, making way for something to begin again.

_“I want to feel you,”_ she said finally, closing her eyes and pressing her cheek against his. _“Even if it’s the last time.”_

_“It’s not,”_ he promised her, and they fell apart together.

 

* * *

 

**To JJ:** **Can you find a sitter?**

**JJ:** **Will’s home. What’s up?**

**To JJ:** **We broke up.**

**JJ:** **White wine or red?**

 

* * *

 

**David ‘Eyebrows’ Rossi:** **Need a hug?**

**To David ‘Eyebrows’ Rossi:** **Fuck no**

**David ‘Eyebrows’ Rossi:** **Oh thank god. I’m no good at being comforting. Chin up. Things get better.**

 

* * *

 

**Morgan:** **Do I need to get him drunk?**

**To Morgan:** **He’s on a thousand painkillers. I think that might be dangerous**

**Morgan:** **At least it will be cheap.**

 

* * *

 

“It’s very…” Emily peered around the apartment that could have been a double for hers, except for the echo-y emptiness of it.

“Perfect!” shrieked Garcia, bouncing around and examining everything. Morgan was pacing, eyeing the walls critically. “Can I help decorate?”

Spencer looked uncomfortable, glancing nervously at Hotch as though for help. “Um… yes?”

Garcia’s whoop of excitement sent pigeons fluttered for safety from the fire escape outside. Emily watched and smiled, despite how much it hurt. Maybe she wasn’t as good at hiding it as she thought she was.

“This will be good for the both of you,” JJ said quietly, bumping her hip against Emily’s companionably. “You’ll see. It’s the right thing to do.”

“The right thing to do _hurts_ ,” Emily said, closing her eyes and turning away.

“It usually does,” JJ called after her as she left.

 

* * *

 

There was a knock on her door one night, and she opened it to find Spencer standing there leaning heavily on his cane, Sergio hanging from his other arm.

“He was in my sink,” Spencer said, frowning down at the cat. “I have no idea how he got in there. How did you get in there?”

Sergio purred. Emily took him back and smiled tightly. “Thanks. Are you still ready for training in the morning? Dave wants to get us syncing our magic up better, he said we’re sloppy.”

Spencer’s nose wrinkled. “We’re not sloppy,” he protested, “we’re alternative.”

She laughed and he joined in. “Are you hungry?” she asked, stepping aside so he could see the takeaway containers on the coffee table, for a moment forgetting in the normalcy of their laughter that everything had changed.

The smile vanished. “I don’t think that’s a good idea just yet,” he said gently, nodding to Sergio and turning to walk back to his apartment. “Good night, Emily.”

“Night, Spence.” She closed the door between them.

She hated waiting.

 

* * *

 

There were no mirrors in his apartment. No photos, no mementoes. No sign at all of the Spencer from before; his belongings still boxed up and closed in the spare room. He was a man rebuilding himself into a stranger from the ashes of what Foyet had taken from him, and she wondered if she would have any place in this stranger’s heart. His bed was made and she could tell in a heartbeat it wasn’t slept in. It wasn’t even hard to notice, when the couch was a nest of blankets shoved close to the corner of the room and with a direct line of sight to the door.

“Don’t profile me,” he said sharply, spotting her expression, and she looked away and wondered if he was actually coping, or just perfecting the pretence of it.

 

* * *

 

Her cell buzzed on the jet. She flicked it open with her thumb, half listening to Morgan explaining a football game to a blank-faced Rossi.

**Spence:** **I got the job. I start next week.**

**To Spence:** **I didn’t even know you applied for one.**

**Spence:** **I didn’t tell anyone. I’m lecturing at UDC, part time. They also want me to work with their research teams. The long-term effects of thrall-bonds on neuroplasticity. It will help people.**

She tapped her fingers on the slick surface of her cell, lost for what to say. It wasn’t that she didn’t know what to say, it was just that there was _too_ much she wanted to say.

Finally, she decided.

**To Spence:** **I’m proud of you. Good luck.**

“Good news?” Hotch asked, watching her over the top of his book. “You’re smiling.”

She nodded, feeling the smile widen. “Fantastic news,” she replied.

**Spence:** **Thank you**

 

* * *

 

Someone was trying to beat her door down. She staggered up, pulling her dressing gown tight and wrenching it open.

“What?” she snapped, finding herself face to face with Rossi. Eris was twining around his legs, but she slipped past and greeted Sergio with a loud purr, forming into a shadowy cat duplicate of him.

“Do you have clothes on under that?” he asked, glancing at her purple robe. She pulled it closer, almost self-consciously. It had been a _gift_. “Yes? Good. Come on, we’re going next door.”

“Dave, it’s Saturday morning,” she complained, following him anyway. “I was sleeping.”

“It’s been a year,” he responded quietly. “It’s November 29th.”

Oh.

She should have remembered that.

She followed him into Spencer’s apartment and found the place buzzing. Spencer was sitting on his couch, looking overwhelmed. She slipped over to him, dodging around Garcia and Morgan arguing over balloons, and Jack trying to read a book to Henry on the floor.

“Party time?” she asked, smiling at him. He pulled a face.

“Garcia’s idea,” he complained, sliding over to make room for her. She moved his cane gently, the grip worn down from his fingers and the oils of his skin. “She says we need to turn bad things into good things. And her idea of doing so is a party, apparently, which I think means our ideas of ‘good things’ are wildly different…”

“Spence,” she said, tapping his elbow. She’d found it was effective at stopping his tangents. “Just enjoy it.”

_“Fine,”_ he sent, but his mind was smiling. _“But don’t tell them I’m having fun, or Garcia will come up with new excuses for parties and I’ll never get any work done.”_

 

* * *

 

She was standing on her fire escape watching the sun setting when there was a clatter of wings and he landed awkwardly on the railing, his knee buckling and wings flaring to catching himself. She caught his hand, yanking him forward and almost sending them both sprawling. A box corner smacked her in the temple, and she yelped.

“Graceful,” she complained, straightening and steadying him as he fumbled for his cane through the jumble of bags he was holding. “You’re not supposed to be carrying anything when you’re flying. You’ll strain your wing.” He smelled of alcohol, smoke and cologne that wasn’t his, and she let go of him quickly.

Guilt flickered across his face. “Christmas presents,” he said by way of explanation, holding up the bags. “For, um… Henry. Mostly. JJ’s probably going to tell me off.”

She ball-parked the number of gifts in the array of bags and corrected him. “JJ is definitely going to kick your ass. But Henry will be delighted.”

He beamed. “Well, one out of two isn’t bad.” She watched as he fumbled with his window, sliding it open, before handing him the box he’d dropped.

“Spence?” she murmured, unsure exactly what she was going to say. He turned, tilting his head and smiling at her. It struck her how easily he smiled now, the nightmares of his past fading and letting him shine through again. “Want to… I have a bunch of terrible horror movies I borrowed. I figured you could tell me all about the stylistic choices the directors made while we watch them and ruin any of the suspense.”

He paused. She watched him bite at his lip, considering. “Maybe,” he said finally, vanishing into his apartment and leaving her alone. She sighed and closed her eyes against a biting wind that had sprung up around her.

 

* * *

 

She was dozing on the couch that night when Sergio mrrowed loudly. Her eyes gummed shut with sleep and half unconscious still, she staggered into the kitchen, reaching automatically for the can opener, when he mrrowed again. She rubbed her eyes against the glare, peering about for him. He lashed his tail at her, pacing in front of the window. She blinked.

Someone knocked again on the glass, hesitantly.

Spencer grinned tentatively as she pulled the window open and stared at him, and then at the clock. It was past midnight for crying out loud.

He held up a bag of takeaway. “Sorry I’m late,” he said softly, holding out his hand so she could help him awkwardly through the window, the wings he no longer glamoured away but wore proudly brushing against the frame. Now he knew what a real monster looked like, he wore his own inhumanity comfortably. She took his hand without hesitating.

They’d been hurt, lost and broken, but this was not the end of them.

She thought that it was very possibly another beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”_
> 
> **Terry Pratchett, _A Hat Full of Sky_**

**Author's Note:**

> **Edited November, 2017.**


End file.
